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THE 

COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF 

JOHN MILTON 

Cambridge dEDttion 




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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

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COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND CO. 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



TWO COPIES RECUVtD. 






APR 1 7 1899 









EDITOR'S NOTE 

The text here given follows in general the edition of 1645 for the poems covered 
by that edition, that of 1667 for Paradise Lost, that of 1671 for Paradise Re- 
gained and Samson Agonistes. Occasional readings from the other early editions 
have been preferred. In the matter of spelling and capitalization a compromise 
has been attempted between complete modernization and complete adherence to 
the originals. Generally speaking, the old spelling has been retained where the 
frequency of its occurrence entitled it to the rank of usage, or where it may be 
judged to have some special value in the verse. 

In regard to the prose translations of the Latin poems a word may be prefaced. 
With the verse translations of Cowper, Strutt, and Masson already in existence, 
the chief justification of a prose rendering is naturally to be looked for in its literal- 
ness. The present translator has nevertheless taken occasional liberties with the 
original, in order to make clear, without resort to notes, the allusive passages. 
Here and there, also, an epithet has been omitted, or an unimportant phrase sup- 
pressed, in order to avoid a cumbersome effect in the prose. 

The dates attached to each poem are in some cases certain, in others conjectural. 
An attempt has been made to justify the assumption of dates only in the few cases 
where the usual and accepted chronology has been departed from. In the English 
poems, the chronological order of arrangement has been followed, except in the 
case of the Nativity Ode, which has been given a more conspicuous position than 
it is chronologically entitled to, and in the case of two or three short poems of the 
Horton period, transposed for mechanical reasons. In the Latin poems, the ar- 
rangement made by Milton has been preserved ; but several short pieces of minor 
interest, and three bits of Greek verse, have been transferred to the Appendix. 

Much of the matter usually given in notes has been incorporated in the intro- 
ductions and headnotes. The notes proper have been made as brief and as strictly 
explanatory as possible. No notes have been furnished for the Latin poems, as an 
effort has been made in the prose renderings to meet all important difficulties of 
interpretation. 

Milton has been so much written about that it is next to impossible for an editor 
to acknowledge specifically the aid which he has received from his predecessors in 
the field. No editor or biographer, however, can well omit mentioning his indebt- 
edness to the researches of Professor Masson, though to do so is to be guilty of 
obviousness. 



vi EDITOR'S NOTE 



The portrait which fronts the title-page is that known as the Onslow portrait, 
from its having belonged to Speaker Onslow, but it has disappeared since the sale 
of Lord Onslow's pictures in 1828. It had originally belonged to Milton's widow. 
This photogravure is after Vertue's engraving made in 1731 from the portrait then 
in Speaker Onslow's possession. The vignette on the title-page represents the 
" pretty box " which Ellwood found for the poet in the village of Chalfont St. 
Giles, during the prevalence of the Plague of 1665. 

W. V. M. 

New York, February 13, 1899. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



THE LIFE OF MILTON . ix 

PART FIRST: ENGLISH POEMS. 

Poems written at School and at Col- 
lege, 1624-1632. 

Introduction 5 

On the Morning of Christ's Na- 
tivity 7 

A Paraphrase on Psalm CXIV 10 

Psalm CXXXVI .... 11 

On the Death of a Fair Infant 

dying of a Cough ... 12 
At a Vacation Exercise in the 

College 13 

The Passion 15 

On Shakespeare . . • -16 

On the University Carrier . 17 
Another on the Same . . .17 
An Epitaph on the Marchioness 

of Winchester .... 18 
On his being arrived to the Age 
of Twenty-Three . . . .19 
Poems written at Horton, 1632-1638, 
and in Italy, 1638-1639. 
Written at Horton: 
L'Allegro and II Penseroso. 
Introduction .... 23 

L' Allegro 26 

II Penseroso .... 28 
Sonnet to the Nightingale . 30 
Song on May Morning . . 30 

On Time 30 

At a Solemn Music ... 30 
Upon the Circumcision . . 31 
Arcades and Comus. 
Introduction .... 32 

Arcades 38 

Comus 40 

Lycidas. 
Introduction .... 54 

Lycidas 60 

Written in Italy: 
Introduction .... 63 
Sonnet : " Donna leggiadra, il 

cui bel nome onora" . . . 63 
Translation : " Lady gay and 
gracious, whose fair name hon- 
ORS " 63 

Sonnet: ''Qual in colle aspro, 
all' imbrunir di sera " . .64 



Translation : " As on a rough 
hillside, at dusk of evening " 

Canzone : " Ridonsi donne e gio- 
vani amorosi " . 

Translation : " The ladies and 
young lovers laugh at me " 

Sonnet: " Diodati (e te 'l diro 
con maraviglia) " 

Translation: ''Diodati (I tell 
it thee with wonder) " 

Sonnet : " Per certo i bei vostr' 
occhi, Donna mia" 

Translation: "In sooth, your 
beauteous eyes, my Lady" . 

Sonnet: " Giovane, piano, e sem- 
plicetto am ante " . 

Translation: "A young, and 
meek, and simple lover " 
Poems written during the Civil War 
and the Protectorate, 1642-1658. 
Sonnets : 

Introduction .... 

When the Assault was intended 
to the City .... 

To a Virtuous Young Lady . 

To the Lady Margaret Ley 

On the Detraction which fol- 
lowed UPON MY WRITING CER- 
TAIN Treatises 

On the Same 

On the New Forcers of Con- 
science UNDER THE LONG PAR- 
LIAMENT 

To Mr. H. Lawes on his Airs . 

On the Religious Memory of 
Mrs. Catherine Thomson 

On the Lord General Fairfax . 

To the Lord General Crom- 
well ...... 

To Sir Henry Vane, the Younger 

On the Late Massacre in Pie- 

MONT 

On his Blindness 

To Mr. Lawrence .... 

To Cyriack Skinner . 

To the Same 

On his Deceased Wife 
Translations : 
The Fifth Ode of Horace Lib. i. . 
Nine of the Psalms done into Metre : 



64 

64 
(54 
64 
63 
63 
65 
65 
65 

69 

74 
74 
74 

74 



vm 



CONTENTS 



Psalm LXXX, " Thou Shepherd 

THAT DOST ISRAEL keep " . . 79 

Psalm LXXXI, "To God our 

strength sing loud and clear' 1 '' . 80 
Psalm LXXXII, " God in the great 

ASSEMBLY STANDS " . . . 81 

Psalm LXXXIII, "Be not thou si- 
lent now at length " . . 81 
Psalm LXXXI V, " How lovely 

ARE THY DWELLINGS FAIR ! " .82 

Psalm LXXXV, " Thy land to fa- 
vour GRACIOUSLY " . . . 82 

Psalm LXXX VI, "Thy gracious 
ear, Lord, incline " . . .83 

Psalm LXXX VII, " Among the 
holy mountains high " . . 84 

Psalm LXXX VIII, " Lord God, that 

DOST ME SAVE AND KEEP " . . 84 

Psalm I, " Blest is the man who hath 

NOT WALKED ASTRAY " ... 85 

Psalm II, " Why do the Gentiles tu- 
mult AND THE NATIONS" . . .85 

Psalm III, " Lord, how many are my 
foes ! " 85 

Psalm IV, " Answer me when I call " 86 

Psalm V, "Jehovah, to my words 
give ear" 86 

Psalm VI, "Lord, in thy anger do 

NOT REPREHEND ME " . . . 87 

Psalm VII, " Lord, my God, to thee 
I fly" 87 

Psalm VIII, "O Jehovah our Lord, 
how wondrous great " . . 88 

Paradise Lost, 1658-1663. 

Introduction 91 

On Paradise Lost . . . .101 

The Verse 102 

Paradise Lost 102 

Paradise Regained, 1665-1667. 

Introduction 249 

Paradise Regained .... 252 

Samson Agonistes : A Dramatic Poem, 
1667-1671. 

Introduction 283 

Milton's Introduction . . . 292 
Samson Agonistes .... 293 

PART SECOND: LATIN POEMS. 

Introduction 319 

De Auctore Testimonia. 

Joannes Baptista Mansus, Marchio 

Vellensis Neapolitanus, ad 

joannem mlltonum anglum . 321 

Ad Joannem Miltonem Anglum, 

triplici poeseos laurea coro- 

NANDUM GRiECA NIMIRUM, LATINi, 



atque Hetrusca*, Epigramma Jo- 

annis Salsilli Romani . . 321 
Ad Joannem Miltonum . . . 322 
Al signor Gio. Miltoni, Nobili 

Inglese. Ode .... 321 
Joanni Miltoni, Londinensi . . 322 
Elegiarum Liber. 
Elegia Prima — Ad Carolum Dio- 

datum . . . . . 323 

Elegia Secunda — In Obitum Pr-e- 

conis Academici Cantabrigiensis 326 
Elegia Tertia — In Obitum Pr^e- 

sulis wlntoniensis . . . 327 
Elegia Quarta — Ad Thomam Ju- 

nium, Pr^ceptorem suum . . 329 
Elegia Quinta— In Adventum 

Veris 333 

Elegia Sexta — Ad Carolum Dio- 

datum, ruri commorantem . 337 

Elegia Septima 340 

Epigrammata : 

In Proditionem Bombardicam 343 

In Inventorem Bombards . 344 

Ad Leonoram Rome Canentem . 344 
Sylvarum Liber. 
In Obitum Procancellarh Medici 346 
In Quintum Novembris . . 347 
In Obitum Pr^esulis Eliensis . 354 

Naturam non pati Senium . . 355 
De Idea Platonica quemadmodum 

Aristoteles intellexit . . 357 

Ad Patrem 358 

Ad Salsillum, Poetam Romanum, 

JEgrotantem 362 

Mansus 363 

Epitaphium Damonis .... 367 
Ad Joannem Rousium . . . 375 

APPENDIX. 

I. Notes and Illustrations . . 381 
II. Supplementary Latin and Greek 

Poems 409 

From the Elegiarum Liber : 
Apologus de Rustico et Hero . 409 

De Moro 410 

Ad Christinam, suecorum Regi- 
nam, Nomine Cromwelli . 410 
From the Sylvarum Liber : 
In Salmash Hundredam . . 410 
In Salmasium .... 410 

PsALM CXIV, 'l<rpar)\ ore 7rai8es, or 

aykaix </>vA' 'Ia/<u>/3ov .... 410 

Philosophus ad Regem . . 410 
In Effigiei ejus Sculptorem . . 410 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
INDEX OF TITLES 



413 
. 415 



THE LIFE OF MILTON 



YOUTH AND COLLEGE LIFE, 1608-1632 

We are aided in the study of Milton's life by the sharpness of line which 
separates the three main epochs of his history : his life of student ease, during 
which he was preparing himself with consecration for his poetic vocation ; his life 
of public service, when he put behind him his poetic ambitions and threw himself 
with fanatical ardor into the struggle for liberty ; and his old age, when, blind and 
discredited, he sat down amid the wreck of everything for which he had given his 
best twenty years, to write the poem which from early youth he had felt it his mis- 
sion to leave to the nation. 

Milton's youth was singularly sweet and sheltered. He was born in London 
on the 9th of December, 1608, the son of John Milton, a scrivener or solicitor do- 
ing business at the sign of the Spread Eagle in Bread Street. It is worth noting 
that for two generations at least the Miltons had exhibited intense partisanship in 
the religious disputes which agitated the nation. Richard Milton, the poet's grand- 
father, had been a stubborn Catholic recusant under Elizabeth, and John Milton, the 
poet's father, had broken with his family in order to join the Puritans. The Puri- 
tanism of the home in Bread Street was not, however, of an ascetic or unlovely type. 
The father was an accomplished musician, of some note as a composer, and could 
even on occasion try his hand at poetry. This mellow atmosphere of taste and 
cultivation, spiritualized by a sincere piety, united with larger circumstances to 
enrich life for the young poet. We must remember that in Milton's childhood 
Shakespeare was still alive, that at the Mermaid Tavern, probably in the very 
street where the scrivener's house stood, Ben Jonson held his " merry meetings," 
and that most of the stalwart figures which had made the reign of the Virgin 
Queen illustrious were still to be seen about the streets of London. There was 
as yet hardly a hint of the passing away of those " spacious times," of the spirit of 
romance and adventure, which had filled Elizabethan England. His nature, there- 
fore, was in no danger of being starved at the outset, as it must have been if his birth 
had fallen a few decades farther on in the struggle between the old and the new, 
when Puritanism had narrowed and hardened itself in order to project itself more 
forcibly against its enemies. 

Yet perhaps it is not fanciful to see an adumbration of the new spirit soon to 
darken over England, in the unchildlike devotion with which the boy Milton gave 
himself to his studies. First under a private tutor, one Thomas Young, a Presby- 



THE LIFE OF MILTON 



terian curate, whom he reverenced tenderly in later life, and afterwards at St. Paul's 
School, he applied himself so eagerly to his studies that, as he himself says, from 
his twelfth year on he rarely left his books before midnight. Besides reading tl 
classical authors necessary for admission to the university, he was allowed to wan 
der freely through the literature of his own tongue ; the poets who have left th 
most distinct trace on his early work are Spenser and Sylvester, the latter in b 
translation of the Divine Weeks and Works of the French moralistic poet Du Be 
tas. In Milton's earliest verses, the paraphrases of Psalms xciv and cxxx\ 
written at fifteen, commentators have discerned traces of reading from such diver 
authors as Chaucer, Drayton, Drummond, Fairfax (the translator of Tasso) ai. 
Buchanan. A portrait by the Dutch painter Jansen which has been preserved to 
us, painted, it is true, before this passion for study began, but doubtless represent- 
ing faithfully enough the features which Milton retained through boyhood, shows 
a reassuringly healthy little face. The gaze is frank and level, though with a 
sweet after-seriousness ; the form under the black braided dress betrays a delicate 
vigor, and the firm lines of the head are emphasized by the close-cropping of the 
auburn hair. 

The one event worth chronicle in his school life is his friendship with Charles 
Diodati, a young Anglo-Italian whom he met at St. Paul's school. It was full of 
boyish generosity and emulation, and was perhaps the warmest human relationship 
which Milton ever experienced. It continued to grow in spite of their separa- 
tion. Diodati went to Oxford, and Milton, at the age of sixteen, entered Christ's 
College, Cambridge. 

The routine of a seventeenth - century college, with its fixed tasks and small 
tutorial methods, could hardly fail to be irksome to a spirit like Milton's, just 
awakening to the first arrogant consciousness of power. He complains that he is 
" dragged from his studies," and compelled to employ himself in " composing some 
trivial declamation." Whether on this or some other score, he got into trouble 
with his tutor Chappell, was rusticated for a time, and on his return was transferred 
to another tutor. A Latin verse-epistle (Elegy I) addressed to Diodati, recount- 
ing gaily his visits to the theatres and parks of London, marks the date of his tem- 
porary suspension. The same epistle contains a rapturous eulogy of the girls of 
London, the tone of which, with its youthful hyperbole and ardor, is particularly 
pleasant in his case. 

For already he had begun to lay the foundations of that " conscious moral archi- 
tecture " which was to be the dominant ideal of his life and to mark him out 
sharply among the spontaneous and desultory race of poets. His college compan- 
ions, noting his fresh-colored oval face, his flowing auburn hair, his slender frame, 
his fastidiousness in manners and in morals, nicknamed him, with the happy off- 
hand criticism given to undergraduates, the " Lady of Christ's." What they 
interpreted as feminine in him was really the expression of a deep conviction on 
his part, — a conviction virile enough, since it was to determine his whole conscious 
existence, but so far removed into the realm of ideality that it may well have seemed 



YOUTH AND COLLEGE LIFE, 1608-1632 xi 

a little wan to his boisterous companions, even if they had taken the trouble to un- 
derstand it. This conviction was that he was appointed to some great work of 
poetic creation, and that such a work could come only as the outgrowth of a life 
of austerity. As yet it was merely the delicate austerity, the fastidious abstention, 
of an Elizabethan ; but it was of a kind to turn easily into something sterner. 
That this double conviction had taken complete possession of Milton's mind before 
he left college, two passages from his verse of this period testify. One we find im- 
bedded in a Latin epistle to Diodati (Elegy VI), who, sending him some verses, 
has excused himself for their lightness of tone by the fact that they were composed 
in the midst of country merry-making. Milton accepts the excuse, but declares 
that the poet who would sing of great themes, " of wars, and of Heaven under 
adult Jove, and of pious heroes, and leaders half-divine, singing now the holy 
counsels of the gods above, and now the realms profound where Cerberus howls, 
— such a poet must live sparely, after the manner of the Samian teacher. Herbs 
must furnish him his innocent food ; clear water in a beechen cup, sober draughts 
from the pure spring, must be his drink. His youth must be chaste and void of 
offence ; his manners strict ; his hands without stain. He shall be like a priest 
shining in sacred vestment, washed with lustral waters, who goes up to make 
augury before the jealous gods. . . . Yea, for the bard is sacred to the gods : 
he is their priest. Mysteriously from his lips and breast he breathes Jove." 
There is in this perhaps an element of convention and of boyish bombast, but it is 
nevertheless the same thought which he expressed twenty years later, when he de- 
clared his early belief that " he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write 
well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem . . . not presum- 
ing to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities unless he have in himself 
the experience and practice of all that which is praiseworthy." 

Again, in the fragment entitled At a Vacation Exercise in the College, after 
singing the praises of English speech, he goes on to speak of the kind of subject 
upon which he longs to try its powers. He would take his hearers, 

" Where the deep transported mind may soar 
Above the wheeling- pole, and at Heaven's door 
Look in, and see each blissful deity 
How he before the thunderous throne doth lie 
List'ning to what unshorn Apollo sings." . . . 

It is a side illustration of the remarkable unity of Milton's purpose, that, translat- 
ing the pagan terms here given into Biblical ones, this subject is the one to which, 
in old age, he reverted for his supreme effort. 

He did not content himself with theory alone. During the seven years which 
he spent at Cambridge, he wrote, besides much Latin verse, a number of English 
poems. Of these only three or four are remarkable enough to have singled Milton 
out from the crowd of young poets and poeticules who then swarmed at the uni- 
versities. First among these is of course the Hymn on the Nativity, written in 
the sixth year of his college residence, when he was twenty-one years old. The 



xii THE LIFE OF MILTON 

opening stanzas are disfigured by the conceits and ingenuities which had been 
made fashionable in England by the extraordinary poems of John Donne, seconded 
by the example of the Italian poet Marini. But as the poem progresses, Milton's 
imagination takes fire, the images gain in majesty and richness, and the language 
gathers a kingly confidence of rhythm and phrase, a shadowed but triumphant 
music, like the chanting of young seraphs awe-struck at their theme, — which were 
altogether new in English verse. One has to know with some minuteness what 
poetry had been under Elizabeth and James, to realize the unique quality of voice 
in this Hymn. Taking the poem as a whole, one can scarcely agree with Hallam 
that it is " perhaps the finest ode in the English language," but again and again 
in its unequal lines Milton sends a herald voice into the wilderness, announcing 
in no dubious tones the advent of a master of song. 

Clearly as we can now see Milton's gift announced in these early college efforts, 
they by no means stilled their author's restless desire to make that announcement 
more signal. The sonnet on his twenty-third birthday breathes deep dissatisfaction 
with his accomplishment up to that time. He grudges the " hasting days " which 
leave him songless, and — thinking perhaps, as Mr. Gosse suggests, of young 
Abraham Cowley, whose marvellously precocious productions had already made him 
famous in his thirteenth year — he speaks enviously of those " more timely happy 
spirits," the blossoming of whose genius had been seasonable. From this grudging 
mood he rises at the end into a tone of large resignation to the conditions under 
which he shall be called to work out his desires. When we consider what those 
conditions were to be, the words fall upon the ear with a special accent : — 

" Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow, 
It shall be still in strictest measure even 
To that same lot, however mean or high, 
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. 
All is, if I have grace to use it so, 
As ever in my great Task-master's eye." 

It was in such a mood that Milton left Cambridge, after seven years' residence 
there. His father had intended him for the church, but such a career, although 
not yet rendered impossible by his broadening opinions, was distasteful because 
of the trammels it imposed. An academic career was no more alluring, even if it 
had been possible without taking orders. His discontent with the Cambridge tone 
comes out several times in his Latin verses and elsewhere. In his first elegy, al- 
luding to his rustication from college, he exclaims, " How ill does that place suit 
with poets ! " and in one of his pamphlets he makes disdainful allusion to the young 
graduates who " flutter off all unfledged into theology, having gotten of philology 
or philosophy scarce so much as a smattering, and who for theology " are content 
with just what is enough to enable them to patch up a paltry sermon." Upon 
Cambridge, therefore, and its " turba legentium prava " he turned his back, not 
however, to return to the house in Bread Street. His father, having acquired a 
competency, had retired to the little village of Horton in Buckinghamshire, seven- 



HORTON PERIOD, 1632-1638 xiii 

teen miles to the southwest of London ; here, amid rural sights and sounds, Milton 
was to spend the next five years, the happiest of his life. 



II 

HORTON PERIOD, 1632-1638 

It was fortunate for the harmonious development of Milton's genius that during 
the critical years between youth and manhood, years which in most men's lives 
are fullest of turmoil and dubiety, he was enabled to live a life of quiet contempla- 
tion. His nature was fiercely polemical, and without this period of calm set be- 
tween his college life and his life as a public disputant, the sweeter saps of his mind 
would never have come to flower and fruitage. It was particularly fortunate, too, 
that this interim should be passed in the country, where the tyric influences were 
softest, where all that was pastoral and genial in his imagination was provoked. 
The special danger of men of his stamp, in whom will and doctrine are constantly 
president over impulse, is the loss of plasticity, the stiffening of imagination in its 
bonds. His " long holiday " at Horton left Milton free to capture in verse the 
ductile grace of youth, to have his leafy season. Afterward his work was to be 
less a sylvan growth, and more a monumental thing builded with hands. 

The narratable facts of these five years are naturally few. Milton says himself 
that he " spent a long holiday turning over the Latin and Greek authors," and 
some volumes annotated by him have been preserved to show the wide range of 
reading indicated. The most notable additions to his treasury of thought were 
contributed by Euripides and Plato. He made occasional visits to London, for 
instruction in music and mathematics, to purchase books, to visit the theatres, and 
to call upon his married sister Anne Phillips or his younger brother Christopher, 
now entered as barrister at the Inner Temple. The facts of real significance, 
however, are the ones which cannot be chronicled, — the drama which goes on in 
every sensitive life between the individual soul and the spirit of nature. The epi- 
sodes are nothing, — a ramble by starlight along a piece of water, a nesting bird 
surprised in the hedge, a speaking light at dawn, — but the results, when the one 
actor is young enough to meet the eternal youth of the other, are not to be mea- 
sured. In the beautiful Sonnet to the Nightingale we see the habitual seriousness 
of Milton's nature invaded by the tenderness and soft vague passion of spring in 
the country ; it has a troubadour grace and wistfulness discernible nowhere else 
among his utterances. More characteristically and with equal beauty, these new 
influences found expression in the twin poems L y Allegro and II Penseroso, named 
from the two typical moods of mind in which the poet confronts the pageantry of 
nature, the mood of joyous receptivity and the mood of sober contemplation. In 
the studied symmetry of these poems, their contrapuntal answering of part to part, 
as well as in the objective standpoint from which they are written, there is a self- 
consciousness alien to the born nature poet. Such a poet indeed Milton was not. 



xiv THE LIFE OF MILTON 

He sees nature neither with the spiritual insight of Wordsworth nor with the 
childlike absorption and awe of his contemporary Henry Vaughan. Standing out- 
side nature, he uses its spectacles as text and illustration of a mood which has its 
origin within. He does not even draw illustration exclusively from those sights 
which met his eye in the landscape about Horton, but borrows eclectically, wher- 
ever in visible nature or in scenes remembered from books he finds matter to his 
purpose. In any exact sense, therefore, these poems are not personal. In a larger 
sense they are profoundly so. They are the record of a serious, scholarly mind 
suddenly invaded in a propitious moment of youth by the beauty of external exist- 
ence, — a beauty gay or sober, as chance may determine, but always richly solicit- 
ing. In a letter to Diodati, written from Horton, Milton says : " God . . . has 
instilled into me, if into any one, a vehement love of the beautiful. Not with so 
much labor ... is Ceres said to have sought her daughter Proserpina, as it is 
my habit day and night to seek for this idea of the beautiful . . . through all the 
forms and faces of things." Such pure sestheticism has on his lips a somewhat 
alien sound. We seem to be listening to the author of Endymion, rather than to 
the author of Comus. 

Mark Pattison was the first of Milton's biographers to give sufficient emphasis 
to the pathos which these poems derive from the fact that in them, for the first and 
last time, Milton spoke in the free, joyous spirit of the time which was passing away 
forever. Even here, to be sure, the mood is chastened and objectified ; but taken 
broad and long, in their lightness, their grace, their eager response to sensuous 
beauty, these poems are of the great lyric age inaugurated by Spenser, though they 
show a sense of form and an economy of expression which Spenser's diffuser muse 
could not attain. When we look forward fifteen years and see Milton grimly sec- 
onding the movements of a party whose fanaticism crushed out the joy and poetry 
of life in England, cut down the Maypoles, closed the theatres, broke the stained- 
glass windows, and tore out the organ-pipes, the lines which celebrate the " jocund 
rebeck," the " well-trod stage," and the " storied windows richly dight," take on a 
peculiar significance. The man who was to be the pamphleteer champion and the 
bard of Puritanism is living here in the world of romantic charm which Crom- 
well's armies were to sweep away. The man who had written the Sonnet to the 
Nightingale was to turn that " small lute " into a trumpet whence he might blow 
soul-animating strains of strenuous applause. 

Either shortly before or shortly after Milton left college he had been asked, prob- 
ably by young Henry Lawes, at that time gentleman of the Chapel Royal and one 
of the King's private musicians, to furnish a portion of the words for an entertain- 
ment to be presented before the Countess Dowager of Derby, at her country-seat of 
Harefield, by the younger members of her family. The libretto which Milton fur- 
nished is the fragment known as Arcades, or the Arcadians. Harefield lay only 
ten miles from Horton, and it is possible that Milton may have been present on the 
night when the actors in the little masque, disguised as shepherds and sylvan 
deities, and carrying torches in their hands, approached the aged countess, seated 



HORTON PERIOD, 1632-1638 



in state at the end of the historic avenue of elms known as the Queen's walk. The 
aged dowager had in her youth been Spenser's friend ; and it is pleasant to dwell, 
with Professor Masson, upon the possibility that the eyes which had seen the first 
saw now also the last of the great line of Elizabethan minstrels. In any case, 
Lawes was so well satisfied with Milton's words that three or four years later he 
applied for a more elaborate piece of work of the same sort, this time to celebrate 
the inauguration of the countess's son-in-law, the Earl of Bridgewater, into his 
duties as Lord President of Wales. Lawes had under his instruction the Lady 
Alice, youngest daughter of the earl, as well as her sister and two brothers ; he 
desired to put their accomplishments to service in the production of a masque gor- 
geous enough to suit the august occasion. The heartiness with which Milton threw 
himself into his part of the project is evidenced by the rich and rounded beauty 
of the result. He never gave his work a definite title, but it is named in modern 
editions from the chief dramatis persona, Comus, the god of revelry. All efforts 
to discover whether or not the young author was present when his masque was 
given in the banqueting-hall of the historic castle of Ludlow, on the Welsh border, 
have been futile. 

The main motive of the poem, the power of chastity to subdue the forces of evil, 
is a conventional one in the literature of the time. It is only in occasional passages 
of deeper conviction that we can see the growth of Milton's mind away from the 
idyllicism of L' Allegro and II JPenseroso, toward the polemic sternness which, 
after announcing itself in golden adumbrations of melody in Lycidas, was to go 
on gathering intensity and losing beauty until its ugly culmination in the Reply 
to Salmasius. In the light of Milton's later development, the very fact of author- 
ship in the masque form shows the irony of events. These poem-pageants summed 
up all that was most gorgeous, extravagant, and pleasure-loving in the court life of 
the Tudors and the Stuarts. They had always constituted a covert protest against 
the Puritan barrenness and strictness of life, and shortly before Comus was written, 
this protest had become overt. The attack made by the Puritan barrister Prynne 
upon the stage, in his Histriomastix, had given offence to the court ; a passage of 
ponderous invective against women-players was interpreted as an insult to the 
Queen, who had shortly before taken part in a masque at Whitehall. The result 
was a revival of the masque by court sympathizers, on a scale of unprecedented 
splendor, and the masque became a kind of rallying point for cavalier feeling. 
Comus belongs certainly by date and probably by intention to this demonstration 
against the Puritan party. It is indicative of the quiescence of Milton's mind at 
this time with respect to the political situation, that he should have lent his 
powers unwittingly to such a task. 

The next three years of Milton's life at Horton were unproductive. He con- 
tinued that elaborate course of intellectual and spiritual preparation which he had 
marked out for himself, fortifying himself in all ways for the greater task which 
vaguely beckoned. To Charles Diodati he writes, in response to an inquiry as to 
what he is thinking of, " Why, may God help me, of immortality ! I am growing 



THE LIFE OF MILTON 



my wings for a flight." For broad flight he was not yet ready, and for lesser ones 
the sting of occasion was lacking, until the autumn of 1637. Then news came of 
the sinking of a ship in the Irish Sea, and the loss of all on board, including 
Edward King, a fellow of Christ's and an old college-mate of Milton's. King's 
Cambridge friends determined to issue a little volume of commemorative verse, to 
which Milton, as a recent graduate, was asked to contribute. It is an odd experi- 
ence now to turn over the pages of this little volume, and, after reading the well- 
meaning heaviness of which it is mainly composed, to come suddenly at the end 
upon the large threnodic rhythm of the opening lines of Lycidas. Lycidas has 
been called by so competent a critic as the late Mr. Pattison, the highwater mark, 
not only of Milton's genius, but of English lyric poetry. Superlatives are danger- 
ous, and never more so than when dealing with work of a commanding order. It 
is perhaps more to our purpose to note what the same critic has suggestively 
pointed out, that in this poem the world of Milton's youth and the world of his 
manhood meet. The general tone of the lament is indistinguishable from that of 
the ordinary pastoral threnodies of the school of Spenser. There is the same air 
of deliberate convention, the same pensive beauty, the same delicious melancholy 
grace in the wearing of the rue. But once past the induction we come upon lines 
which apprise us that we are in the presence of a sterner moral conception than 
ever troubled the smooth pipes of the early pastoralists. In the passage beginning 

" Last came and last did go 
The pilot of the Galilean lake," 

there is a " smothered and suspended menace," a passion of purification, which 
was soon to wreak itself upon everything in Church and State for which the House 
of Stuart stood, and to sweep away in its blind zeal much that was beautiful and 
desirable. It was to take, among other good things, that very gift of pure melody 
which was given to Milton's youth. He was to come out of the struggle strength- 
ened to grapple with a vast theme, but stiffened and shorn of grace. He was to 
live to build language into large harmonic masses, intricate and solemn fugues, but 
never to recapture that simple singing voice which charms us in the poems written 
during his " long holiday " at Horton. 

Ill 

ITALIAN JOURNEY, 1638-1639 

Toward the end of his fifth year at Horton, Milton began to feel the cramping 
intellectual conditions of life in the country and to think of taking chambers in 
London. This project he soon abandoned for the wider one of foreign travel. 
The expenses of the trip were borne by his father, with that generous acquiescence 
which he had always shown in his son's plans of self-improvement. After a short 
stay in Paris Milton proceeded to Italy, then the seat of a decaying but still splen- 
did civilization, and even richer then than now in beauty. 



ITALIAN JOURNEY, 1638-1639 xvii 

At Florence, where he tarried for two months, some metrical trifles in Latin, 
which he managed to patch up on demand, were received with egregious flattery 
by the various " academies " or literary clubs, where the shallow intellectual life 
of the time was chiefly centred. The definite eulogiums of his Florentine friends, 
as for instance the declaration by Francini that by virtue of these Latin poems 
Thames may rival Helicon, are in a tone of elaborate compliment too patently con- 
ventional to have been intended for literal interpretation. Taken broadly, how- 
ever, they doubtless testify, as has been said, to a genuine impression of power 
made by the young English poet upon men of a temperament very alien to his 
own. Whatever amount of sincerity may really have attached to these panegyrics, 
it is certain from an interesting passage in Milton's pamphlet on Church Gov- 
ernment, published three years later, that they added materially to his own confi- 
dence in his powers. The passage is one of many indications, hitherto unempha- 
sized by his biographers, that in spite of his haughty self-reliance and self-assertion 
Milton was exceedingly sensitive to influences from without. 

In Rome, whither he proceeded in November of 1638, he was treated with a dis- 
tinction by no means calculated to lessen this feeling. He mentions with some 
complaisance his reception at a magnificent concert given by Cardinal Barberini, 
who " himself waiting at the door and seeking me out in so great a crowd, almost 
laying hold of me by the hand, admitted me within in a truly most honorable 
manner." It was here that he heard the famous singer Leonora Baroni, commemo- 
rated in his Latin epigrams, and possibly in the Italian sonnet beginning, — 

" Diodati, e '1 ti diro eon maraviglia," 

a passage which would seem to show that this lady shared with the unknown beauty 
of Bologna to whom the other sonnets are addressed, the honor of an inroad upon 
the Puritan poet's austere but susceptible heart. From Rome his journey lay 
to Naples ; here he was entertained by the aged Marquis Manso, a munificent 
patron of letters who had sheltered Tasso and given aid to Marini. The exchange 
of courtesies between the two at parting elicited one of Milton's most elegant 
Latin poems, memorable as containing explicit mention of a plan then maturing in 
his mind for an epic poem on the legendary history of King Arthur. Incidentally, 
a glimpse is given us of Milton's uncompromising frankness in the expression 
of his religious opinions ; the marquis accompanies his parting gift of two richly 
wrought cups with the hint that his guest's outspokenness has made it impossible 
for him to extend a fitting hospitality. 

Plans for an extended trip eastward to Greece and Palestine were cut short by 
serious political news from England. King Charles was about to start on his first 
expedition against the Scots. Milton knew enough of the acute condition of affairs 
in the kingdom to realize the serious nature of such a move, and started northward, 
thinking it shame, he says, to be taking his pleasure while his countrymen were 
fighting for their liberty. His return was leisurely enough, however, to allow of a 
two months' delay at Florence, made memorable by his meeting with Galileo. 



THE LIFE OF MILTON 



The meeting probably occurred at the villa of Arcetri, near Florence, where the 
aged and blind astronomer was still held in partial confinement by the Inquisition 
The painter who has given us the picture of Milton dictating Paradise Lost to 
his daughters might have found here a subject in which truth need not have bee^ 
sacrificed to picturesqueness. The meeting of these two great navigators of cosmic 
space, bound together by a common intrepidity and a common fate, exercises a 
legitimate spell over the imagination. It is open to question whether Milton ever 
accepted Galileo's cosmic theories as true ; certainly he did not see fit to admit the 
new astronomy into the scheme of Paradise Lost, except in the tentative form of 
a discussion of the theory between Adam and Raphael. But that he cherished the 
august memory of the blind philosopher, in his own days of blindness and defeat, 
is evidenced by the famous comparison of Satan's shield seen through the " Tuscan 
artist's optic glass," in Paradise Lost. Another reminiscence of this visit to 
Arcetri is the comparison of the fallen angels prostrate on the flood, to " autumnal 
leaves that strew the brook in Vallombrosa." 

During February or April, 1639, Milton visited the ancestral home of the Dio- 
dati at Lucca. The hope of pleasing his bosom friend with an account of the 
place, which had prompted the visit, was not to be fulfilled. Diodati's death had 
already occurred. News of his bereavement reached Milton at Genoa, and con- 
spired with news of the increasing gravity of the political and religious troubles in 
England to make his home-coming a solemn one. It is a severe loss to English 
literature that for the noble poem in which he enshrined the memory of his friend 
Milton chose the Latin instead of his native tongue. Diodati was much nearer to 
him than King had been ; the sincere grief which makes itself felt even across the 
conventionalized medium of the Epitaphium Damonis testifies that if the poet had 
waited for a like moment of power, and had then poured his emotion into his native 
idiom, this and not Lycidas might be held to-day as the greatest of English thren- 
odies. As it is the poem is an exquisite and touching work of art. Its interest is 
heightened by the autobiographic matter which it contains, especially concerning 
the projected epic dealing with the early history of Britain. We are informed 
that the epic is to be in English, the poet having reconciled himself, as Dante did, 
to the narrower but more susceptible audience thus afforded him ; we learn also 
that it is already begun. 

IV 

from milton's return to England to the latin secretaryship, 

1639-1649 

Each succeeding biographer of Milton shares Coleridge's feeling of bathos in 
the fact that after renouncing his cherished schemes of travel in order to be present 
at those portentous changes in English religion and politics of which he had pre- 
sentiment, he should have made haste on his return to London to burden himself 
with the petty duties of a schoolmaster. At first he had under his tutelage only 



MILTON'S RETURN TO ENGLAND xix 

his two nephews, John and Edward Phillips, but later more pupils were added, in- 
cluding some of eminent family ; nor does the pamphlet war into which he soon 
plunged appear to have interrupted the daily routine of pedagogy. A mere ruin- 
ous waste of time, we are tempted with Pattison to declare. To see the author of 
Lycidas putting by his lyre in order to seize the sword of controversy is endurable, 
but to see him in the schoolroom, pottering over Frontinus's Stratagems and the 
egregious poet Manilius, without the excuse of pecuniary necessity, begets in us 
nothing but impatience. The explanation of his action, however, is tolerably obvious. 
During the ten years between his return to England and his appointment as Latin 
Secretary to Cromwell's government, Milton was in a state of extraordinary nervous 
unrest. He had put poetry behind him to embark in a " troubled sea of noises 
and hoarse disputes," but the part which he found to play in the struggle during 
these years was not eminent enough to satisfy his haughty and exigent nature, thus 
divorced from its natural consolation. The five pamphlets which during 1641-43 
he launched against the Episcopal scheme of church government, influential as they 
undoubtedly were, and crowded with passages of lofty eloquence which made 
amends for their lack of a convincing logic, could not offer nepenthe for the rest- 
lessness bred of a great task deferred. In such a state of mind, mere busyness is 
seized upon as a form of self-justification, and incidentally serves as an excellent 
steadier of the nerves. Minor motives also, in Milton's case, doubtless entered in. 
That he had a speculative interest in the problems of teaching is attested by his 
Tractate on Education, with its scheme of training so curiously compounded of 
practical common-sense and impossible idealism. One may suspect, too, that the 
attitude of the teacher had, even in this small and concrete form, an attraction 
for one whose most splendid mental gesture was never quite free from a hint of 
dogmatism. 

Milton's pamphlets on the church question had got him roundly abused by the 
adherents of Archbishop Hall and the prelatical party. The good archbishop calls 
him, among other complimentary things, a " scurrilous Mime, a personated, and, 
as himself thinks, a grim, lowering, and bitter Fool," and describes the terse fa- 
miliar Anglo-Saxon with which Milton gave idiomatic flavor to his thunderous 
periods, as language fit only for fish- wives. These are merely the humors of sev- 
enteenth - century controversy ; his enemies were soon to have more formidable 
weapons put into their hands. 

Edward Phillips informs us that his uncle left home suddenly in May, 1643, 
without stating the object of his journey, and returned a month later with a young 
wife and a train of bridal guests. The solemn house in Aldersgate Street was 
filled with merry-making for a time ; then the bride's friends departed, and Milton 
was left with his seventeen-year old wife to discover at leisure that he had made a 
monstrous blunder. Mary Powell was the daughter of a Cavalier Squire holding 
the seat of Forest Hills, near Oxford, — a gentleman of some social pretension, 
though burdened with debts and a large family. A considerable portion of this 
debt had long been held against him by the Miltons. father and son. "Whether 



THE LIFE OF MILTON 



Milton's visit to Forest Hills was on this business, or whether he knew Mary 
Powell previously, we shall probably never know. Precipitancy in such a matter 
on the poet's part will surprise no one who has studied his character with attention. 
A great part of the stern self-control which belongs to the Milton of tradition was 
an outcome of the bitter consequences of this very marriage. He was from youth 
more than ordinarily susceptible to the charm of women ; boyishly, as we see in 
the first and seventh Latin elegies ; with a youth's wistful expectancy, as in the 
Sonnet to the Nightingale ; with a young man's chivalrous ardor, as in the Italian 
sonnets : and this susceptibility was greatly heightened by the austerity of a life 
which left the springs of concrete emotion untouched. Mary Powell was probably 
the first young woman with whom he came into intimate contact ; the freedom 
of a large household and the beguiling influences of country life were fuel to the 
fire ; and if a doubt arose concerning the parity of their taste and temper, it was 
natural both to the lover and to the idealist to believe in the power of masculine 
will to shape a helpmeet to its own image. He succeeded so well that before the 
honeymoon was over, the girl-wife returned to her home, ostensibly on a visit, but 
really in lasting rebellion against her husband's authority ; and the husband sat 
down in a white passion to write the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, on the 
thesis that a man has the right to put away his wife for incompatibility of temper. 
The majority of Milton's biographers, catching at certain phrases of this tract, 

— "a mute and spiritless mate," " bound fast to an image of earth and phlegm," 

— have laid the rupture to the girl's hebetude. Others, notably Mr. Saintsbury, 
throw the weight of blame on the other side, pointing out that Milton held in the 
most uncompromising form the doctrine of the inferiority of woman, and that, as 
Dr. Garnett says, " his famous ' He for God only, she for God in him,' condenses 
every fallacy concerning woman's relation to her husband and to her Maker." 
The truth doubtless lies between. She, accustomed to the gaiety of a large house- 
hold near a Cavalier garrison, was terror-stricken at the silence which fell about 
her in her husband's sober Puritan house. He, twice her age and full of thoughts 
which she could not even guess at, was at no pains to fondle and coax her into con- 
tentment with this twilight life. If he did not go so far as an anonymous pam- 
phleteer charged him with going, to consider " no woman to due conversation 
accessible, except she can speak Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French, and dispute 
against the canon law," he was doubtless unwisely exigent and perhaps cruelly in- 
tolerant of the unfurnished mind which he had found in the place of that " sweet 
and gladsome society " of his love-dream. 

The first pamphlet on divorce bears evidence of being written at a white heat. 
Both in its qualities and its defects it is a peculiarly Miltonic utterance. As in his 
Tractate on Education he had " legislated for a college of Miltons," here he legis- 
lates for a society of seraphim. Every man is to have power to loose and bind. 
No law shall have authority to " force a mixture of minds that cannot unite," nor 
make irremediable " that melancholy despair which we see in many wedded per- 
sons." It is the positive side of his doctrine, however, which is most eloquently 



MILTON'S RETURN TO ENGLAND xxi 

put forth. Marriage as an ideal institution, " the unexpressive nuptial song," has 
rarely been more nobly conceived than in these pages, and the pleading against 
violations of the spirit by the letter of wedlock rises at times to passionate poetry. 
There are few English sentences as full of virile tenderness as that in which Milton 
says, " Then " (in case his tract is listened to) " I doubt not with one gentle strok- 
ing to wipe away ten thousand tears out of the life of men." The second edition, 
published after his wife's refusal to return, according to her word, at Michaelmas 
of 1643, is strengthened with formal arguments and addressed boldly to the Parlia- 
ment. The Tract was publicly denounced by Mr. Herbert Palmer in a sermon 
before the Houses of Parliament, a sermon which had the more weight because of 
the excitement then reigning in that body over the general growth of " heresy and 
schism," of which Milton's pamphlet was held to be one of the blackest examples. 
One of the most signal, at least, it certainly was, indicative of that terrible spirit 
of question which was abroad in the land, to make a modern England out of the 
England of the Stuarts. The Areopagitica, or speech for the liberty of unlicensed 
printing, the pamphlet of Milton's which has alone held an audience to our day, 
followed as another startling manifesto of his radical thought. Broadly viewed, 
it is a plea for universal toleration of opinion, — exactly what distracted England 
most needed, if she could only have known it. 

In the last but one of his five pamphlets on divorce, Tetrachordon, Milton gave 
hint of his intention to marry again, in the significant words, " If the Law make 
not a timely provision, let the Law, as reason is, bear the censure of the conse- 
quences." He even went so far, according to Phillips, as to select Mary Powell's 
successor, a Miss Davis, to whom in all likelihood the sonnet To a Virtuous Young 
Lady was addressed. Frightened by rumors of this match, and further induced 
by the increasingly desperate condition of the Cavalier cause, the Powells made 
overtures for a reconciliation. Milton was brought, without warning, face to face 
with his truant bride at the home of his kinsman, Mr. Blackborough, in St. Mar- 
tin's le Grand Lane. The passage in Samson Agonistes in which the blind captive 
repulses his " hyena " wife, and that in Paradise Lost where Adam raises up and 
comforts remorseful Eve, have been often pointed out as having a probable auto- 
biographic bearing on this episode. Whether from repentance or a broken spirit, 
the girl-wife seems to have lived the remaining years of her short life meekly 
enough. During the seven years until her death, in 1652, she bore Milton three 
daughters and a son, the son dying in infancy, the daughters surviving to be their 
father's trial and reproach. Measured against her mute acceptance of the situa- 
tion, there is something unpleasantly saturnine in the two sonnets with which Mil- 
ton took leave of the divorce subject. The first of these, on Tetrachordon, is the 
only instance in which he deigned to degrade poetry into doggerel ; for the first 
and last time, in verse, he threw aside his lyre of song and grasped the bastinado 
of contemporary satire — a fact which at least testifies eloquently to the harassed 
condition of his mind. 

During the lull in politics following the defeat of the King at Naseby, in July, 



THE LIFE OF MILTON 



1645, Milton got together the poems which he had written up to that time, and 
gave them for publication to Humphrey Moseley, a printer of disinterested enthu- 
siasm for pure literature, to whom seventeenth-century poetry stands much indebted. 
It was high time that such a collection should be made. In his pamphlets Milton 
had made more than one reference to his vocation as poet, to the work which he 
hoped to accomplish, and which his nation " would not willingly let die." Such 
words had begun to fall upon incredulous ears, for with the exception of an un- 
signed edition of Comus published by Lawes, the Cambridge memorial volume 
containing Lycidas, and a stray piece or two in the miscellanies, none of Milton's 
poems were in print. The motto which he chose for the volume, — 

" Baccare frontem 
Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro," 

(Wreathe his brow with laurel, and let no grudging tongue harm the future poet), 
gracefully combined modesty of claim for his present performance with a proud 
confidence in what was to come. As frontispiece to this famous edition of 1645 
there is prefixed a portrait of the author, a spiritless and bungled engraving, as 
" grim, lowering, and bitter " as good Bishop Hall could have desired. When the 
picture was shown to Milton by the engraver, one Marshall, he made no objection 
to it, but gravely wrote out a Greek motto to be added beneath, which the luckless 
artist as gravely copied on his plate, innocent of the fact that he was handing down 
to posterity a biting lampoon upon his own handiwork. It was a clever practical 
joke, and reminds us of a remark of Dryden's years after, that Milton's manner 
of pronouncing the letter r, the " dog-letter," betrayed a " satiric wit." The 
cleverness of the joke makes ill amends for its saturninity. The poet had moved 
many leagues from the golden clime of his birth before he permitted himself that 
diversion. To be sure, he had moved under bitter stress ; some of the sweet saps 
of his youthful nature may well have been turned to satiric acids. 

It is pleasant, after this, to read the sonnet to Henry Lawes, written after Mil- 
ton was installed with his wife and pupils in a large house which he had taken in 
the Barbican ; for the placid and gracious lines show returning calmness of spirit. 
The halcyon season, however, when the friends might please themselves with " im- 
mortal notes and Tuscan air," was short. Soon the surrender of Oxford drove the 
Powells in a body from Forest Hills to the house in the Barbican. The birth of a 
daughter, Anne, who was from the first " a kind of cripple," added to the disturbed 
condition of the household. The departure of the Powell family was followed by 
the death of Milton's father, and the poet, wearied out with the strain of the past 
months, resolved to give up teaching and remove to a smaller house in High Hol- 
born, near Lincoln's Inn Fields. 

His inheritance from his father had now placed him in easy financial circum- 
stances, and the triumph of the Independent party had left his mind comparatively 
free. Why did he not turn now to that great task of poetic creation of which he 
had thought so long, and for which, as his preserved notebooks show, he had al- 
ready made exhaustive study ? It is impossible to say. Perhaps, in spite of the 



LATIN SECRETARYSHIP, 1649-1659 xxiii 



specious calm, he divined the storms which were still rolling up from the political 
horizon, and had dim prescience o£ the part he himself should be called upon to 
play in the drama of the King's death and Cromwell's sovereignty. Perhaps the 
springs of his fancy were dried up by the harassing years just past ; certainly the 
version of the nine psalms made at this time point to a state of extreme poetic 
sterility. Indeed, Milton was at no time rich in creative impulses from within. 
Endowed to an unmatchable degree with sheer voice, pure potentiality of expres- 
sion, he had to a less degree than many smaller men the kind of imagination which 
puts forth spontaneous and inevitable bloom in its season. The beautiful appari- 
tions of Covins and Lycidas had been evoked from without ; so were the sterner 
and vaster lines of Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes to arise in response to 
an occasion. But that occasion was to be no less than the overthrow of Puritan 
England, and for that the time was not ripe. However we explain the case, it is 
with a kind of impatient wonder that we see the poet, in this time of precious quiet, 
burdening himself with three huge tasks of compilation, — a Latin dictionary, a 
complete history of England from the earliest times to his own day, and a vast 
body of divinity, or Methodical Digest of Christian Doctrine. It should in fair- 
ness be said, perhaps, that mere encyclopaedic scholarship held a much higher place 
in the seventeenth century than it does to-day. The immense reputation achieved 
by such men as Salmasius, Milton's future antagonist, apprises us how eager the 
world then was to set learning above wisdom. This prejudice of the age deter- 
mined the direction of Milton's effort ; the effort itself was doubtless prompted, as 
his school-teaching had formerly been, by a nervous desire to lose in busyness the 
impatience born of greater work deferred. 



LATIN SECRETARYSHIP, 1649-1659 

The time had now come when Milton's patriot zeal was to lift him to a place 
of eminence in the eyes of his countrymen. He had been known hitherto, second- 
arily, as a poet of promise, chiefly as a vigorous pamphleteer of rather startling and 
indecorous opinions ; but his work in neither kind had given him that " experience 
of great men " and that conversation with great events which he deemed necessary 
to the making of a poet. When he threw into the silence of consternation which 
followed the execution of the King at Whitehall, in January, 1649, his fearless de- 
fence of the regicides, entitled the Tenure of Kings and. Magistrates, the eyes 
of the whole country turned towards him. His was the first powerful voice lifted 
in greeting, as it was to be the last lifted in desperate defence, of the free Common- 
wealth. In tacit recognition of his service Bradshaw's Council of State offered 
him the Latin Secretaryship. The duties were large and ill-defined, but chiefly 
consisted in the translating and inditing of correspondence with foreign powers, and 
the replying to seditious pamphleteers who attacked the new government. Milton 



xxiv THE LIFE OF MILTON 



accepted without hesitation. By so doing he put off once more, this time it might 
seem for ever, the possibility of fulfilling his secret purpose. He had not served 
in the armies of Parliament ; indeed, when the King's forces had advanced to 
Brentford and thrown London into a panic, he had not even gone out with the 
train-bands to Turnham Green to join in repulsing the foe, but had stayed at home 
instead and written a sonnet to Prince Rupert's troopers, beseeching them, in the 
name of the Muses, to spare his house from rapine. But if he had not chosen to 
shoulder a musket he had shown himself able to do yeoman's service with his quill. 
It may well have been with the thought of making good his failure to take up the 
sword in the time of his country's need, that he now lay at her feet the most elo- 
quent pen in Europe. 

His first important service was a reply to the Eikon Basilike, a book purport- 
ing to have been written by the late King while in imprisonment, and now seized 
upon with devotion by the partisans of the exiled family. Against this " Royal 
Image " Milton wrote Ikonoklastes, the " Image-breaker." It is a work which 
reflects little credit upon the author. He imputes to the dead king, as one of his 
crimes, a taste for Shakespeare, and makes it a prime argument of his hypocrisy 
that one of the prayers which he was believed to have used in his captivity was 
taken from a passage — a very beautiful and devout passage — of Sidney's Ar- 
cadia. One of the curiosities of Milton's complex character was, as Lowell has 
reminded us, his power to force his conviction into the service of his enthusiasm. 
When it was necessary for him to defend his use of blank verse in Paradise Lost 
he repudiated the value of rhyme in toto, though his own works were there to gain- 
say him ; his own marriage having proved unfortunate, he was for wiping the whole 
institution out of existence. In the same spirit of false but absolutely sincere gen- 
eralization, he turns here upon his beloved Shakespeare and honored Sidney, be- 
cause he finds them made use of by a man whose memory he execrates. 

Following upon these pamphlets came Milton's great opportunity for a European 
hearing in vindication of the Commonwealth, and he embraced it at a frightful 
price. Charles II., an exile at the Hague, had cast about for some man learned 
enough to support the cause of his house against the revolutionists. He found such 
a one in Salmasius, a world-famous scholar and a mighty man of Latin. Nobody 
to-day would dream of employing for such a task the services of a mere scholar, 
however colossal, but the seventeenth-century reverence for the pedantry of learn- 
ing gave the name of Salmasius a portentous weight. On the appearance of his 
book, the Defensio Pegia, Milton was instructed to prepare a rejoinder. He gave 
himself to the task with an ardor doubly inflamed by the magnitude of the quarrel 
and the reputation of his antagonist. He called his reply a Defense of the English 
People, but as we look at it to-day the great issues seem buried almost irrecover- 
ably beneath a mass of very unheroic personalities. Milton sneers at Salmasius's 
Latinity, twits him with subjection to his wife, and exhausts the vocabulary of 
thieves' Latin trying to find a name of contumely adequate to character his base- 
ness. In the midst of this work Milton's eyes showed signs of failing, and he was 



LATIN SECRETARYSHIP, 1649-1659 xxv 



warned by his physician that to persevere to the end would mean certain blindness. 
With stoical devotion, as splendid as it was perverted, he decided to pay the price. 
We groan when we think of the real insignificance of the object for which the light 
of those eyes was spent — spent recklessly, with a kind of frenzy of waste which 
shows what funds of fanaticism lay beneath the placid surface of his nature. 

In the quarrel which dragged on for several years more with Morus, to whom 
Salmasius's cause had descended, the tone of petty personality gained steadily over 
the real question at issue, though at the same time the frankly autobiographic 
passages of Milton grow nobly dignified, and his eulogies upon the leading men 
of the Commonwealth, taken together, form an august vindication of their cause. 
It would be unprofitable to dwell upon the disagreeable aspects of the Salmasius 
controversy, were it not that they illustrate forcibly certain elements of the poet's 
nature which tradition has obscured, yet which are essential to even a primary 
understanding of him. Wordsworth condensed into a single line the popular mis- 
apprehension. So far from being a soul which dwelt like a star apart, Milton was 
one of the most inflammable, mobile, and social of beings. A slight stung him, 
an honor lifted him, a sneer maddened and blinded him. For poetry, indeed, he 
kept the clear ichor of his temperament, free from roil ; and it is as a poet that 
he is remembered ; but one who looks discerningly can detect in the very splendor 
and volume of that utterance the stress of a humanity more than ordinarily obvious 
to passion. 

By 1652 Milton's blindness had become complete. He had meanwhile removed 
from rooms in Whitehall, assigned him during the first years of his incumbency 
of the Secretaryship, to a house in Petty France, pleasantly situated near St. James 
Park, across which he had to be led when his presence was needed at the Council. 
His duties were gradually lightened, the routine work being given to an assistant. 
Edward PhiUips was still with him, to serve as amanuensis, and acquaintance with 
the young poet Andrew Marvell, afterwards his assistant in the Secretaryship, 
brought him another hand to lighten the burden of his blindness. We get from 
Edward Phillips and others many pleasant glimpses of the life which he now led, 
visited by distinguished strangers anxious for a sight of the victor in the Salmasius 
quarrel, " of which all Europe rang from side to side." Hints of more intimate 
converse we get in the sonnets to Cyriack Skinner and to young Lawrence, poetical 
invitations to supper and a cosy evening by the fireside, which assure us by their 
tone of sober gaiety how well Milton bore his misfortune. The geniality of the 
lines reminds us of Phillips's bit of gossip concerning the young " beaux " with 
whom his uncle, after his return from Italy, was accustomed to keep an occasional 
" gaudy-day." But that life in the little house was not all made up of amenities 
we can conjecture from the characters of the three young girls who had been left 
motherless there. During these untended years rebellion against their stern father 
was growing towards its sickening outcome. In 1656 their father married again, 
this time a Mrs. Woodcock, of whom nothing is known except what can be gleaned 
from the sonnet which he wrote upon her death, little more than a year later. To 



xxvi THE LIFE OF MILTON 

judge from the deep marital tenderness of these lines upon his " late espoused 
saint," hers must have been the most gracious influence in the poet's adult life. 

Up to the close of Cromwell's reign Milton continued, as a kind of Latin Secre- 
tary extraordinary, to indite those messages to foreign powers which made the 
period of the Protectorate the most dignified in the diplomatic history of England. 
The most famous of these was among the last, a letter to the Duke of Savoy con- 
cerning the Piedmontese massacre ; in its official way it is as impressive as the 
sonnet on the same subject in which Milton gave vent to his individual horror and 
indignation. His duties were nominally continued under Cromwell's son Richard ; 
but events were hastening with irresistible force toward the downfall of the Pro- 
tectorate and the recall of the King. Milton was one of the last to succumb to the 
logic of the situation. His attitude toward the great questions of Church and State 
had changed many times in the twenty years that were passed. He had begun 
as an Episcopalian with reservations ; he had written his first pamphlets in advo- 
cacy of a modified Presbyterianism ; next he had gone over to the " Root and 
Branch " party, and advocated complete disestablishment of the Church ; then, 
turning fiercely upon the Presbyterians, and declaring that " New Presbyter is 
but old Priest writ large," he had joined the Independents, and had finally pushed 
the thesis of this party to the length of complete toleration of religious opinion. 
But in all these changes, except the last, he had gone with the country. His mind, 
as Lowell says, had not so much changed as expanded to meet new national condi- 
tions. Though he had differed stoutly from Cromwell in his later policy, he had 
remained unshaken in his allegiance to the idea of popular government, even in 
the unpropitious form of a military dictatorship. Dismissed from his office by Gen- 
eral Monk in April, 1659, on the very eve of the return of the exiled court, he pub- 
lished his pamphlet entitled A Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Com- 
monivealth. The very phrase was full of unconscious satire. Upon the blind 
poet, as he sat meditating through those days of public rejoicing, there rested a 
second blindness, that of the idealist resolute to see nothing but his ideal. 

The King's return, however, at last became so imminent that the stoutest idealism 
had to succumb. Nobody knew how inclusive the royal clemency would prove to 
be, and Milton was too marked a man to abide the event with safety. The last 
glimpse we get of him for the next four months is in the shape of a conveyance 
of bond for four hundred pounds, to Cyriack Skinner, dated the day before the 
public proclamation of Charles in London. With the ready money thus furnished 
he went into hiding, Phillips informs us, at a friend's house in Bartholomew Close. 
On June 16 an order for his arrest was issued by the House of Commons, and two 
months later his Eikonoklastes and Defense of the English People were ordered 
burnt by royal proclamation. Strangely enough, however, in the final Bill of In- 
demnity his name is not mentioned. Why the author of the Tenure of Kings and 
Magistrates should have been let off scot free from the vengeance which overtook 
so many men essentially less implicated, constitutes a historical puzzle which Pro- 
fessor Masson has labored in vain to solve. Andrew Marvell afterwards obtained 



COMPLETION OF PARADISE LOST xxvii 



from the House an abatement of the excessive fee demanded from Milton by an 
officious sergeant who had carried out the nullified order of arrest, and his voice was 
doubtless raised now in behalf of his friend and master. There is also a pleasant 
tradition that the poet Davenant repaid an old kindness by a like intercession. 
To whomever the clemency was due, however, Milton was left free by the passage 
of the Act of Oblivion to emerge from hiding. He was not yet perhaps wholly 
free from danger by mob violence. On the night before the anniversary of 
Charles I.'s death, the disinterred corpses of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw 
were brought for safe keeping to the Red Lion Inn, only a short distance from 
Milton's new lodgings in Holborn ; and it was up Holborn that the crazy mob fol- 
lowed the carts next day to the ghastly gibbeting at Tyburn. 

But to Milton's ears, in these days, the rioting of the " sons of Belial " who had 
come back to flout with insolence and outrage every ideal for which the men of the 
Commonwealth had given their lives, must have sounded dim and far away. The 
time had come for him to fulfil the boyish boast made more than twenty years 
before, when he had replied to his friend's question, " Of what am I thinking ? In 
God's name, of immortality ! I am pluming my wings for a flight." Though held 
under by an immense sustained effort of will, the ambition conceived so long ago 
had never for long been absent from his mind. Added to the sense of his mission 
as a singer, sent by the great Task-master to add to the sum of beauty in the 
world, there rested upon him now another obligation, no less impelling. The Puri- 
tan moral scheme, the new social instauration, which had failed on earth, he must 
carry over into the world of imaginative permanence. He must justify to men 
the ways of that God who had dealt so darkly with his chosen people. Already, 
though " long choosing and beginning late," he had carved out from the hollow 
dark the vast traits of his theme. 



VI 

FROM THE ACT OF OBLIVION TO THE COMPLETION OF PARADISE LOST, 

1660-1665 

For a man of Milton's temper the state of public affairs alone would have been 
a sufficient bitterness ; but private trials added their simples to the cup. One of 
the minor but most satiric of these was furnished by the two nephews upon whom 
he had lavished his time and his educational theories. How well the youngest, 
John Phillips, had imbibed his uncle's teachings, he had shown long ago by pub- 
lishing a Satire Against Hypocrites and a Miscellany of Choice Drolleries, which 
earned him a sharp reprimand from Cromwell's Council. His graver brother 
Edward followed the primrose path thus gallantly marked out, by publishing a 
volume entitled The Mysteries of Love and Eloquence, or the Arts of Wooing and 
Complimenting, with a preface to the youthful gentry of England. The royalism 
of both was pronounced ; and although Edward continued to visit the house on 



xxviii THE LIFE OF MILTON 

terms of friendship, his presence must have been to his uncle a pretty emphatic 
reminder of the collapse of his own teaching. 

If the defection of his nephews was satiric, the rebellion of his daughters was 
sordidly tragic. The eldest, Anne, a handsome girl in spite of her lameness, 
was now seventeen ; Mary, the second, was fifteen, and Deborah eleven. They 
had received only the rudiments of an education, the eldest not even being able to 
write. In spite of this their father undertook to make them do him a service in his 
literary labors which they would hardly have been prepared for by a formal college 
training. Edward Phillips says that he used them to " supply his want of eyesight 
by their ears and tongues. For though he had daily about him one or other to 
read to him, — some, persons of man's estate, who of their own accord greedily 
catched at the opportunity of being his readers, . . . others, of younger years, sent 
by their parents to the same end, — yet, excusing only the eldest by reason of her 
bodily deformity and difficult utterance of speech (which, to say truth, I doubt was 
the principal cause of excusing her), the other two were condemned to the perform- 
ance of reading and exactly pronouncing of all the languages of whatever book he 
should at one time or other think fit to peruse : viz. the Hebrew (and, I think, the 
Syriac), the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Spanish, and French." That young 
girls could have been trained to read intelligibly languages of which they did not, 
as Phillips declares, understand a word, is almost beyond belief ; but whether 
literally true or not, the statement implies a sternness and a length of discipline 
gruesome to imagine. Rebellion on their part was natural and inevitable, but 
before the miserable details of their growing aversion to their father, — their con- 
spiring with the servants in petty pilf erings from his purse, their making way with 
his books, the remark of one of them, on hearing of her father's third marriage, 
that " that was no news, but, if she could hear of his death, that was something," 
— the mind turns sick, and wonders whether, if there were another Paradise Lost 
to purchase, it would be worth such a price. Taking the facts as we have them, 
even casuistry can make of them no clean bill of conscience for the father. The 
girls were, it is true, the fruit of an unloving marriage ; their recalcitrancy Milton 
may have looked upon as a part of the grim logic of that forced " union of minds 
that cannot unite," and he may have found justification for his tyranny in the 
bitter memories of the days when he was pouring out his wrath and anguish in 
the tracts on divorce. The radical meanness of nature which betrays itself in their 
petty revenges may have served to wither affection in the bud. But such considera- 
tions explain, without extenuating, his attitude. His daughters remain the great 
blot upon his memory ; they cannot make it less than august, but they suffice to 
render it, from the standpoint of the simple human charities, forbidding. They 
remained with him for eight years longer, when they were put out to learn femi- 
nine handicrafts. A glimpse which we get of the youngest, Deborah, many years 
after, gives a comforting assurance that, however she may have failed in filial duty 
during her f.: oer's lifetime, she cherished a sincere affection for his memory. In 
1721 she was sought out by Addison and others in the weavers' district of Spital- 



COMPLETION OF PARADISE LOST 



fields, where she lived in obscure widowhood. Some pictures of her father were 
shown her, to get her opinion of their authenticity. Several she passed by, saying 
" No, no," to the question whether she had ever seen such a face ; but when a cer- 
tain picture in crayons was produced, she cried out in transport, " 'T is my father, 
't is my dear father ; I see him, 't is him ! " and then she put her hands to several 
parts of the face, crying, " 'T is the very man ! here, here ! " In all her reminis- 
cences of her father there was, her visitors report, the same tone of reverence and 
fondness. 

Besides the robust and cheery figure of Andrew Marvell, a faithful visitor, there 
came to break the gloom of the Milton household a young Quaker, Thomas Ell- 
wood. He was the son of a small country squire, and possessed of all the simplicity 
and heartiness proper to the character. He had embraced the Quaker faith by con- 
tagion from the enthusiasm of a family of Penningtons whom he visited, and along 
with his new faith felt a desire to grow in the wisdom of books. To that end, he 
was introduced to Milton, took a house in the neighborhood, and came every day 
full of joyous zeal to imbibe learning from the works which the great man set him 
to read aloud. Whether poor Ellwood gathered much intellectual sustenance from 
this haphazard diet or not, his presence must have been a wholesome and inspirit- 
ing one to the solitary scholar. From him and Phillips we get some interesting 
hints concerning Milton's habits of composition. " Leaning back obliquely in an 
easy chair, with his leg flung over the elbow of it," he would dictate ten, twenty, 
thirty lines at a sitting. Sometimes he would " lie awake all night, striving, but 
unable to make a single line." Then again, when the mood was on him, the verse 
would come " with a certain impetus and aestro as himself seemed to believe," and 
he would call his daughter Mary out of bed to take the words from his lips. His 
own statement is recorded, too, that " his vein never happily flowed but from the 
autumnal equinoctial to the vernal, and that whatever he attempted (in the other 
part of the year) was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never 
so much." 

How far Paradise Lost had progressed by the time of Milton's instalment in 
the house in Jewin Street, whither he removed from his temporary lodgings in Hol- 
born, is only matter of conjecture. At the beginning of the third book the move- 
ment of the poem is interrupted by a splendid " hymn to light " which may mark 
the resumption of the task after interruption caused by the King's return. A simi- 
lar break occurs at the beginning of Book VII, and references in this passage to 
the " evil days and evil tongues " upon which the poet has fallen, as well as to post- 
restoration literature and manners, the " barbarous dissonance of Bacchus and his 
revellers," point to this as more probably marking the time of resumption. The 
probability is increased by the fact that the next distinct break in the narrative, 
at the beginning of Book IX, would then correspond to the last serious interrup- 
tion which the work could have suffered, that occasioned by Milton's third mar- 
riage, this tim v e to Elizabeth Minshull, a handsome young woman of twenty-six, and 
his removal to a new house in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields. It was certainly fin- 



xxx THE LIFE OF MILTON 

ished by the summer of 1665. In July of that year the coming of the great 
Plague, the most terrible which ever visited England, made it necessary for Milton 
to find some refuge in the country. Ellwood found a place for hirn, a " pretty 
box " in the little village of Chalfont St. Giles, only a few miles from Harefield, 
the scene of Arcades, and not far from Horton, where in early manhood he had 
spent the five happy years of his " long vacation." The country sights, which in 
those days he had given delighted chronicle in L' 'Allegro and II Penseroso, could 
not reach him now. Those poems belonged to a world which was shut away from 
him by many a tragic change besides that which had quenched his bodily vision. 
But lie carried with him, blind and fallen on evil days, the resultant of the twenty- 
five intervening years of battle and sacrifice, in the mighty martial rhythms and 
battailous imaginings of his completed epic. Honest Ellwood was rewarded for 
his fidelity by being the first, so far as we know, to see Paradise Lost in its final 
form. He came one day to visit Milton at the little irregular cottage in sleepy 
Chalfont, and thus describes the incident : " After some discourse had passed be- 
tween us, he called for a manuscript of his ; which, being brought, he delivered to 
me, bidding me to take it home with me and read it at my leisure, and, when I 
had so done, to return it to him, with my judgment thereon. When I came home 
and had set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he entitled 
Paradise Lost." 



VII 

milton's last years, 1666-1674 

Although by February or March of 1666 the Plague had sufficiently abated 
to allow of a return to the house in Artillery Walk, it was not until September of 
the following year that Paradise Lost was published. A part of this delay was 
doubtless due to the great fire which raged in London from the second to the fifth 
of September, 1666. Among the worst sufferers were the booksellers and pub- 
lishers, whose shops were clustered thickly about Old St. Paul's. When the poem 
did appear, it was with the imprint of an obscure publisher, one Samuel Simmons. 
There was for a moment some question whether even under these modest auspices 
it was to see the light, for a passage in the first book aroused suspicions of treason 
in the breast of the Rev. Thomas Tomkyns, M. A., whose business it became to 
license the manuscript. The contract for the book is still extant, showing that the 
author received five pounds at the time of issue, and was guaranteed a similar 
amount upon the exhaustion of each succeeding issue, up to the sum of twenty 
pounds. The first edition of 1300 copies was exhausted in eighteen months. 

Milton's life-dream was fulfilled. He had accomplished the purpose which had 
been the secret motive of his whole conscious existence, as well as the subject of 
many a proud public utterance in the midst of those noises and hoarse disputes 
where he had felt the need of such utterance to sustain him. But he did not for 



MILTON'S LAST YEARS, 1666-1674 xxxi 

that reason loose his grasp on the large lyre so painfully builded and strung. A 
chance remark of Ellwood's on returning the manuscript of Paradise Lost had 
suggested to him a companion subject. " Thou hast said much here/' the young 
Quaker had observed (" pleasantly," as he assures us), " of Paradise Lost, but 
what hast thou to say of Paradise Found ? " The poet had made no answer, but sat 
some time in a muse. Had he, after all, completed his task of justifying the ways 
of God to men ? Satan he had left triumphant, man he had left outcast from 
Eden, earning his painful bread under the curse. Did not the real justification 
lie in that part of the cosmic story which he had as yet only vaguely foreshadowed, 
in the bruising of the Serpent's head by that greater man who should recover Para- 
dise ? Out of such questioning came, some time in the next two years, Paradise 
Regained. The poem was finished before the publication of Paradise Lost, but 
not published until 1671. 

In this poem there is noticeable a distinct change from Milton's earlier manner, 
— a sudden purging away of ornament, a falling back on the naked concept, a pre- 
ference for language as slightly as possible tinctured with metaphoric suggestion. 
A portion of this change may be due to failing vividness of imagination ; certainly 
the abandonment of rapid narrative for tedious argumentation marks the increas- 
ing garrulity of age. Christ and Satan in the wilderness dispute with studied 
casuistry, until the sense of the spiritual drama in which they are protagonists is 
almost lost. As this same weakness is apparent also in the later books of Paradise 
Lost, we must lay it largely to the score of nagging creative energy. But in still 
greater measure the change seems to be a deliberate experiment in style, or perhaps 
more truly a conscious reproduction, in language, of that rarefied mental atmo- 
sphere to which the author had climbed from the rich valley mists of his youth. 
Unalluring at first, this bareness comes in time to have a solemn charm of its own, 
comparable, as has been said, to that of mountain scenery above the line of vegeta- 
tion. Some such beauty as this Milton, himself above all a student and amateur 
of style, must have prized in Paradise Regained, unless we are to attribute to a 
narrow pride his refusal to tolerate the opinion of its inferiority to Paradise Lost. 
Whether deliberate or not, this same quality of style appears in the dramatic poem 
of Samson Agonistes, of the same 1671 volume, stripped of discursiveness, and 
wrought to the hard dark finish of bronze. By reason both of its form and of its 
content this last work of Milton is of absorbing interest. 

Ever since the days of Arcades and Comus, Milton had cherished a fondness 
for the dramatic form. For several years after his return from Italy he had per- 
severed in the intention to make his master-work a drama, and even made sev- 
eral tentative sketches of Paradise Lost in that form. The suppression of stage 
plays by the Long Parliament he had concurred in, but without loss of sympathy 
with the theatre, at least as an ideal institution. It was characteristic of the 
unified purpose of his intellectual life that he should go back now to gather up 
this, the only one of the main threads of his intention still left hanging. For a 
subject, too, he went back to a theme pondered thirty years before. Samson Purso- 



THE LIFE OF MILTON 



phorus or the Fire-bringer, and Samson Hybristes or Samson Marrying, were 
among the subjects pencilled in his note-book in 1642. At that time Samson had 
apparently engaged his attention no more deeply than other Bible heroes whose 
names occur in his notes ; but events had gradually been shaping his life into such 
a form that it now found in Samson's story its sufficient prototype and symbol. 
No hint escapes the poet that the many-sided correspondence of his own case with 
that of his hero is in his mind ; the treatment is throughout sternly objective, even 
sculpturesque in its detachment ; but the autobiographic meaning is everywhere 
latent, giving to the most restrained lines an ominous emphasis and to the least 
significant a strange kind of wintry passion. He too had been a champion favored 
of the Lord, and had matched his giant strength against the enemies of his people. 
He had sent the fire-brands of his pamphlets among their corn, and slain their 
strongest with simple weapons near at hand. He too had taken a wife from among 
the worshippers of Dagon ; he had made festival with' her people over the nuptials 
which brought him a loss as tragic as Samson's, — the loss of human tenderness, 
a lowered ideal, and a warped understanding of the deepest human relationships. 
Now, blind and fettered in the midst of an idolatrous generation, he may well have 
longed for another Salmasius upon whom to wreak, as Samson upon Harapha of 
Gath, the energy which still swelled his veins. In another year or two, when 
Dryden should " tag his verses," and transform his august epic into a trivial opera, 
he would be brought like Samson to make sport before the Philistines, as a juggler 
or a mime. Perhaps he might still hope, bowing his head in prayer to the God 
of the spirit, to bring down the temple builded by the men of the Restoration to 
the gods of the flesh, and bury in the ruins all the insolence and outrage of the 
times. With some such autobiographic second intention in mind as this, one must 
read the gray pages of Samson Agonistes. It offers perhaps the most remarka- 
ble instance in all art of an artist's personal story revealed by impersonal symbols, 
set forth in their traditional integrity, unmanipulated to any private end. 

Milton had three more years to live after the publication of his last poems. His 
daughters had a year before been put out to learn, Phillips says, " some curious 
and ingenious sorts of manufacture that are proper for women to learn, particularly 
embroideries in gold and silver ;" and he was left alone in the house in Bunhill 
Fields with his young wife Elizabeth, of whom he seems to have been fond. The 
publication of Paradise Lost had again made him a figure of some note, visited 
by persons of distinction. The most interesting of these visits was that made by 
Dryden, for the purpose of asking permission to put Paradise Lost into rhyme, 
as a kind of sacred opera. The value of rhyme over blank verse, for heroic pur- 
poses, had been the main contention of Dryden's Essay on Dramatic Poetry, and 
the publication of the epic shortly after had been a powerful practical manifesto 
on Milton's part of his opposed opinion. This difference of artistic theory only 
serves to emphasize the fundamental differences between the two men, spokesmen 
and champions of antipodal creeds. Their trivial meeting takes on a kind of moral 
picturesqueness when we think of them in their typical characters, — the militant 



MILTON'S LAST YEARS, 1666-1674 xxxiii 

spirit of an age of fiery baptism, the time-serving spirit of an age of pleasure. 
There is a half-humorous recognition of the gulf set between them in Milton's 
" Yes, you may tag my verses," with which he granted his visitor's request, — 
a reply which does not gain in urbanity when contrasted with Dryden's generous 
and whole-souled praise of the poem he was called upon to travesty. 

We get from the painter Richardson some vivid glimpses of Milton in old age. 
He speaks of him being led about the streets, clad in cold weather in a gray cam- 
blet coat, and wearing no sword, though " 't was his custom not long before to wear 
one, with a small silver hilt." And again, " I have heard that he used to sit in a 
grey coarse cloth coat at the door of his house, near Bunhill Fields, without Moor- 
gate, in warm sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air, and so, as well as in his room, 
received the visits of people of distinguished parts, as well as quality ; and very 
lately I had the good fortune to have another picture of him from an aged clergy- 
man in Dorsetshire. He found him in a small house, he thinks but one room on 
a floor. In that, up one pair of stairs, which was hung with a rusty green, he 
found John Milton, sitting in an elbow chair ; black clothes, and neat enough, pale 
but not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty and with chalk-stones." The 
Faithorne portrait, engraved in 1670, shows a face deeply seamed with lines of 
thought and of pain, eyes unblemished, but full of the disappointed query of blind- 
ness, hair flat over the brows and falling slightly waved to the shoulders, and a 
mouth of singular richness, which seems still to crave life, — the one lingering fea- 
ture of the youthful mask. 

Rising at four o'clock in summer and five in winter, hearing a chapter of the 
Bible in Hebrew read to him before breakfast, passing the day in work, with 
music and a little walk for diversion, and ending with a supper " of olives or some 
light thing," a pipe and a glass of water, — he lived placidly the meagre days left 
to him. Shortly before his death, being at dinner with his young wife, and finding 
a favorite dish prepared for him, he cried out, " God have mercy, Betty, I see thou 
wilt perform according to thy promise in providing me such dishes as I think fit 
whilst I live ; and when I die, thou knowest that I have left thee all." The nun- 
cupative will thus made was contested at law by his daughters, and broken. He 
diecf on the eighth of November, 1674, " with so little pain that the time of his ex- 
piring was not perceived by those in the room." " All his learned and great friends 
in London," says Toland, " not without a concourse of the vulgar, accompanied his 
body to the church of St. Giles, near Cripplegate, where he was buried in the 
chancel." 

Many circumstances have combined to falsify for the modern mind the outlines 
of Milton's character. The theme most closely linked with his name as a poet has 
thrown about him a traditional reverence which has obscured his human lineaments. 
The political passions of his day are many of them still, under changed names, 
potent enough to distort his figure according to the direction of our approach. 
Added to these difficulties is the more essential one, that the harmony which he 
forced upon his character was made up of a hundred dissonances. He added 



<\* 



tvnn^Ews^ / 



xxxiv THE LIFE OF MILTON 



to the complexity of the poet the complexities of the theologian, the theorist, and 
the publicist. He was compelled to make himself over from Elizabethan to Crom- 
wellian, not quietly and by slow processes, but in the centre of clashing forces. 
This slight sketch can at best have pointed out only the most salient material ne- 
cessary to judgment of a character so variously endowed and acted upon. It will 
have accomplished its end if it has dissatisfied the reader with a conventional 
opinion. 

As for his poetry, Milton must be thought of first and last as a master stylist. 
Keats is more poignant, Shakespeare more various, Coleridge more magical ; but 
nobody who has written in English has had at his command the same unfailing 
majesty of utterance. His is the organ voice of England. The figure suggests, 
too, the defect of his qualities. His voice is always his own ; he has none of the 
ventriloquism of the dramatic poets, none of the thaumaturgy by which they ob- 
scure themselves in their subject. Milton is always Miltonic, always lofty and 
grave, whether the subject sinks or rises. Through him we come nearest to that 
union of measure and might which is peculiar to the master poets of antiquity, 
and it is through a study of him that the defects of taste incident upon our modern 
systems of education can be most surely made good. 

W. V. M. 



PART FIRST 
ENGLISH POEMS 



POEMS WRITTEN AT SCHOOL AND AT 
COLLEGE 

1624-1632 



POEMS WRITTEN AT SCHOOL AND AT COLLEGE 



It is hardly wrong to say that the Eng- 
lish poems which Milton wrote before his 
twenty-third year are interesting chiefly 
because of their defects. Although he at- 
tained very early a sense of his individual 
power and a conviction of his mission as a 
singer, he was surprisingly tardy in finding 
his voice. Many poets have done their 
most characteristic work at an age when 
Milton was still speaking in the borrowed 
accents of a debased school. 

During the first half of the seventeenth 
century English poetry lay under the spell 
of an enthralling personality, that of John 
Donne. This singular man, known in ma- 
ture life by the staid titles of Dr. Donne, 
Dean of St. Paul's, and Prolocutor to the 
King's Convocation, the author of sermons 
and religious poems which are still read 
for their mystical fervor, had had a wild 
youth, and had produced a body of love 
poems of unexampled intensity. Unfortu- 
nately, along with a power of direct impas- 
sioned expression which instantly imposed 
itself, he had an intellectual perversity, a 
delight in far-fetched analogies and wire- 
drawn conceits, which made him the evil 
genius of young poets. His was the chief 
among many influences contributing during 
the reign of James and the first Charles to 
fill the garden of the Muses with growths 
of fantastic tastelessness, which all but 
smother the " plants and flowers of light." 
To see how far this perversion went even 
in the case of real poets, one has only to 
read such a production as " The Tear," by 
Richard Crashaw, where the eyes of the 
Magdalen, after being compared to every- 
thing else conceivable, are rapturously ad- 
dressed as 



" Two walking baths, two weeping motions, 
Portable and compendious oceans." 

That Milton's boyish admiration was at- 
tracted to the tinsel gewgaws of this " meta- 
physical " school of poetry, as Dr. Johnson 
oddly named it, is plain in all his early 
verse. The lack of humor which was his 
one great congenital fault, exposed him 
especially to the temptations offered by the 
conceitful manner. His verses " On the 
Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough," 
with its drolly humorless title, is a per- 
fect example of emotional and imaginative 
falsity, such as the school of the concettisti 
was sure to engender in a juvenile bard 
who had not yet arrived at artistic self- 
knowledge. Even in the " Passion," writ- 
ten after the " Ode on the Nativity," he 
relapses oddly into conceitfulness. Per- 
haps the worst length to which he was 
ever tempted occurs in the closing stanzas 
of this poem. Speaking of the tomb of 
Christ, he says, — 

" Mine eye hath found that sad, sepulchral rock, 
That was the casket of Heaven's richest store, 
And here, though grief my feeble hands up- 

loek, 
Yet on the softened quarry would I score 
My plaining verse as lively as before ; 
For sure so well instructed are my tears, 
That they would fitly fall in ordered charac- 
ters." 

The note with which he excused himself 
for not completing this poem, saying that 
he was " nothing satisfied with what he had 
done," has a touch of pathos. He failed to 
see the difficulty, which was not that the 
subject was " above the years he had when 
he wrote it," but that he was benumbed 



POEMS WRITTEN AT SCHOOL AND AT COLLEGE 



and bewildered by contact with a perverted 
style. 

Even thus hampered, however, his genius 
could not help sending out an occasional 
herald voice ; and we do not have to look 
far to find exceptions to all that has just 
been said concerning these early efforts. 
Curiously enough, the very first line of his 
recorded composition, 
" When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son," 

written at fifteen, has the true Miltonic 
gravity and largeness. In the "Vacation 
Exercise," in close connection with the long- 
ing there expressed to use his native lan- 
guage in some great poetic emprise, we 
find an expression of his disgust at the in- 
genuities so dear to the heart of the " meta- 
physicals," those 

" New-fangled toys and trimming slight, 
Which take our late fantastics with delight." 

His lines on Shakespeare show an appre- 
ciation of that sane master completely at 
variance with the stiff exaggeration of its 
concluding verses, which are quite in the 
concettistic spirit. It should not go un- 
chronicled either, that in the lines on the 
death of Hobson, the University carrier, 
Milton showed at least a seasonable desire 
to be humorous. 
• But it is the hymn On the Morning of 
Christ's Nativity which allows us to read his 
early title clear. A good deal of reserva- 
tion, it is true, has to be made even here. 
The poem has to an extreme degree the 
Jacobean vice of diff useness, possibly caught 
in this instance from the beautiful religious 
epic of Giles Fletcher, Christ's Victory and 
Triumph on Earth and in Heaven; the metre 
of the induction is certainly imitated from 
that poem, and an occasional quaint dulcity 
of expression, such as, 

" See how from far upon the Eastern road 
The star-led Wizards haste with odours sweet," 

seems as certainly caught from it. The 
opening description of Nature's attempt to 
hide her sin under a covering of snow at 



the moment of the Saviour's birth, the sun's 
shamed reluctance to rise because of the 
presence of a greater Sun, and the drolly 
prosaic figure in the next stanza from the 
last, where the sun is pictured in bed, with 
cloud curtains drawn about him and his 
chin pillowed upon a wave, — over all this 
is the trail of affectation and mistake. In 
places, too, where the thought becomes 
more sincere, the imagery remains unplas- 
tic. The descent of " meek-eyed Peace," 
for example, in the third stanza, reminds one 
of the stage-contrivances of a court masque ; 
and the figures of Truth, Justice, and 
Mercy, in stanza fifteen, have the same dis- 
illusioning suggestion. But when all reser- 
vation is made, and all the unvitalized mat- 
ter counted out, there remains enough true 
poetry in the Hymn to have furnished forth 
a lesser man for immortality. Scattered 
lines and even stanzas of splendid utter- 
ance occur throughout, but the grand man- 
ner begins in earnest with the nineteenth 
stanza: — 

" The oracles are dumb, 
No voice or hideous hum 
Runs through the arched roof in words de- 
ceiving, 
Apollo from his shrine 
Can no more divine, 
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos 
leaving. 
No nightly trance or breathed spell 
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from his prophetic 
cell. 

" The lonely mountains o'er 
And the resounding shore 
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; 
From haunted spring, and dale 
Edged with poplar pale, 
The parting Genius is with sighing sent; 
With flower-inwoven tresses torn | 
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thick- 
ets mourn." 

These and the four stanzas which follow N 
are not only magnificent and flawless, they / 
are also pitched in a key before unheard in 
England, and colored with the light of a 
new mind. 

The Hymn shows Milton's youthful gen- 



ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY 



ius at its highest point; but if we would read 
the full record of his youth, we must turn 
to the Latin poems. He gradually desisted 
from Latin as a means of poetic expres- 
sion in later life, abandoning it altogether, 
except for a stray trifle, after his thirty- 
second year. But during his life at college 



he poured into this alien medium all the 
first fervor of his imagination. When we 
say, therefore, that he was, as he averred 
himself to be, not " timely happy," in put- 
ting out the flowers of his song, we must 
say it with this reservation of the Latin 
poems in mind. 



ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S I 
NATIVITY 

(1629) 

For an account in Milton's own words of the 
origin of this ode, the reader is referred to the 
closing lines of the Sixth Latin Elegy, transla- 
tion, p. 339. He there calls it a " birthday gift 
for Christ," and says that it was begun on 
Christmas morning. That it was not written 
in response to a general invitation on the part 
of the academic authorities, as has sometimes 
been conjectured, but sprang from a personal 
impulse, seems clear from the context of that 



I 

This is the month, and this the happy morn, 
Wherein the Sou of Heaven's eternal King, 
Of wedded maid and Virgin Mother born, 
Our great redemption from above did 

bring; 
For so the holy sages once did sing, 

That he our deadly forfeit should release, 
And with his Father work us a perpetual 
peace. 



That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable, 
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty, 
Wherewith he wont at Heaven's high 
council-table 10 

To sit the midst of Trinal Unity, 
He laid aside, and, here with us to be, 

Forsook the Courts of everlasting Day, 
And chose with us a darksome house of mor- 
tal clay. 

in 

Say, Heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred 

vein 
Afford a present to the Infant God ? 
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn 

strain, 
To welcome him to this his new abode, 



Now while the heaven, by the Sun's team 

untrod, 
Hath took no print of the approaching 

light, 20 

And all the spangled host keep watch in 

squadrons bright ? 



See how from far upon the Eastern road 
The star-led Wisards haste with odours 

sweet ! 
Oh ! run ; prevent them with thy humble 

ode, 
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet ; 
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to 

greet, 
And join thy voice unto the Angel Quire, 
From out his secret altar touched with 

hallowed fire. 

The Hymn 



It was the winter wild, 
While the heaven-born child 30 

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies ; 
Nature, in awe to him, 
Had doffed her gaudy trim, 
With her great Master so to sympathize : 
It was no season then for her 
To wanton with the Sun, her lusty Para- 



Only with speeches fair 
She woos the gentle air 
To hide her guilty front with innocent 
snow, 
And on her naked shame, 40 

Pollute with sinful blame, 
The saintly veil of maiden white to 
throw ; 
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes 
Should look so near upon her foul deformi- 
ties. 



POEMS WRITTEN AT SCHOOL AND AT COLLEGE 



in 

But he, her fears to cease, 
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace : 
She, crowned with olive green, came 
softly sliding 
Down through the turning sphere, 
His ready Harbinger, 
With turtle wing the amorous clouds 
dividing; 50 

And, waving wide her myrtle wand, 
She strikes a universal peace through sea 
and land. 

IV 

No war, or battail's sound, 
Was heard the world around; 
The idle spear and shield were high up- 
hung; 
The hooked chariot stood, 
Unstained with hostile blood; 
The trumpet spake not to the armed 
throng ; 
And Kings sat still with awful eye, 
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord 
was by. 60 



But peaceful was the night 
Wherein the Prince of Light 
His reign of peace upon the earth began. 
The winds, with wonder whist, 
Smoothly the waters kissed, 
Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean, 
Who now hath quite forgot to rave, 
While birds of calm sit brooding on the 
charmed wave. 

VI 

The stars, with deep amaze, 
Stand fixed in steadfast gaze, 70 

Bending one way their precious influence, 
And will not take their flight, 
For all the morning light, 
Or Lucifer that often warned them 
thence ; 
But in their glimmering orbs did glow, 
Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid 
them go. 

VII 

And, though the shady gloom 
Had given day her room, 
The Sun himself withheld his wonted 
speed, 



And hid his head for shame, 80 

As his inferior flame 
The new - enlightened world no more 
should need: 
He saw a greater Sun appear 
Than his bright Throne or burning axletree 
could bear. 

VIII 

The Shepherds on the lawn, 
Or ere the point of dawn, 
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row; 
Full little thought they than 
That the mighty Pan 
Was kindly come to live with them 
below: 90 

Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep, 
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy 
keep. 

IX 

When such music sweet 
Their hearts and ears did greet 
As never was by mortal finger strook, 
Divinely-warbled voice 
Answering the stringed noise, 
As all their souls in blissful rapture took: 
The air, such pleasure loth to lose, 99 

With thousand echoes still prolongs each 
heavenly close. 



Nature, that heard such sound 
Beneath the hollow round 
Of Cynthia's seat the airy Region thrill- 
ing* 
Now was almost won 
To think her part was done, 
And that her reign had here its last ful- 
filling: 
She knew such harmony alone 
Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier 
union. 

XI 

At last surrounds their sight 
A globe of circular light, no 

That with long beams the shamefaced 
Night arrayed ; 
The helmed Cherubim 
And s worded Seraphim 
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings 
displayed, 
Harping in loud and solemn quire, 
With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new- 
born Heir. 



ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY 





The Babe lies yet in smiling infancy 


XII 


That on the bitter cross 


Such music (as 't is said) 


Must redeem our loss, 


Before was never made, 


So both himself and us to glorify: 


But when of old the Sons of Morning 


Yet first, to those ychained in sleep, 


sung, 


The wakeful trump of doom must thunder 


While the Creator great 120 


through the deep, 


His constellations set, 




And the well-balanced World on hinges 


XVII 


hung, 


With such a horrid clang 


And cast the dark foundations deep, 


As on Mount Sinai rang, 


And bid the weltering waves their oozy 


While the red fire and smouldering 


channel keep. 


clouds outbrake: 




The aged Earth, aghast 160 


XIII 


With terror of that blast, 


Ring out, ye crystal spheres ! 


Shall from the surface to the centre 


Once bless our human ears, 


shake, 


If ye have power to touch our senses so; 


When, at the world's last session, 


And let your silver chime 


The dreadful Judge in middle air shall 


Move in melodious time; 


spread his throne. 


And let the bass of heaven's deep organ 
blow; 130 


XVIII 


And with your ninefold harmony 


And then at last our bliss 


Make up full consort to the angelic sym- 


Full and perfect is, 


phony. 


But now begins ; for from this happy day 




The Old Dragon under ground, 


XIV 


In straiter limits bound, 


For, if such holy song 


Not half so far casts his usurped sway, 


Enwrap our fancy long, 


And, wroth to see his Kingdom fail, 171 


Time will run back and fetch the Age 


Swindges the scaly horror of his folded tail. 


of Gold; 


/ 


And speckled Vanity 


// XIX \ 

/' The Oracles are dumb; 


Will sicken soon and die, 


And leprous Sin will melt from earthly 


No voice or hideous hum 


mould; 


Runs through the arched roof in words 


And Hell itself will pass away, 


deceiving. 


And leave her dolorous mansions to the 


Apollo from his shrine 


peering day. 140 


Can no more divine, 




With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos 


XV 


leaving. 


Yea, Truth and Justice then 


No nightly trance, or breathed spell, 


Will down return to men, 


Inspires the pale-eyed Priest from the pro- 


The enamelled arras of the rainbow 


phetic cell. 180 


wearing; 




And Mercy set between, 


XX 


Throned in celestial sheen, 


The lonely mountains o'er, 


With radiant feet the tissued clouds 


And the resounding shore, 


down steering; 


A voice of weeping heard and loud la- 


And Heaven, as at some festival, 


ment; 


Will open wide the gates of her high pal- 


From haunted spring, and dale 


ace-hall. 


Edged with poplar pale, 


XVI 


The parting Genius is with sighing sent; 


With flower-inwoven tresses torn 


But wisest Fate says No, 


The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled 


This must not yet be so; 150 


thickets mourn. 






v <•■ 



IO 



POEMS WRITTEN AT SCHOOL AND AT COLLEGE 



In consecrated earth, 
And on the holy hearth, 190 

The Lars and Lemures moan with mid- 
night plaint; 
In urns, and altars round, 
A drear and dying sound 
Affrights the Flamens at their service 
quaint; 
And the chill marble seems to sweat, 
While each peculiar power forgoes his 
wonted seat. 

XXII 

Peor and Baalim 
Forsake their temples dim, 
With that twice-battered god of Pales- 
tine; 
And mooned Ashtaroth, 200 

Heaven's Queen and Mother both, 
Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine : 
The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn; 
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded 
Thammuz mourn. 

XXIII 

And sullen Moloch, fled, 
Hath left in shadows dread 
His burning idol all of blackest hue ; 
In vain with cymbals' ring 
They call the grisly king, 
In dismal dance about the furnace blue; 
The brutish gods of Nile as fast, 211 

Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste. 



Nor is Osiris seen 
In Memphian grove or green, 
Trampling the unshowered grass with 
lowings loud; 
Nor can he be at rest 
Within his sacred chest; 
Nought but profoundest Hell can be his 
shroud; 
In vain, with timbreled anthems dark, 
The sable-stoled Sorcerers bear his wor- 
shiped ark. 220 

XXV 

He feels from Juda's land 
The dreaded Infant's hand; 
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky 
eyn; 
Nor all the gods beside 
Longer dare abide, 



Not Ty phon huge ending in snaky twine : 
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true, 
Can in his swaddling bands control the 
damned crew. 

XXVI 

So, when the Sun in bed, 
Curtained with cloudy red, 230 

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave, 
The flocking shadows pale 
Troop to the infernal jail, 
Each fettered ghost slips to his several 
grave, 
And the yellow-skirted Fays 
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their 
moon-loved maze. 

XXVII 

But see ! the Virgin blest 
Hath laid her Babe to rest, 
Time is our tedious song should here 
have ending: 
Heaven's youngest-teemed star 240 
Hath fixed her polished car, 
Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp 
attending; 
And all about the courtly stable 
Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order ser- 
viceable. 



A PARAPHRASE ON PSALM CXIV 

(1624) 

To this translation there is prefixed in the 
original editions the words : " This and the 
following Psalm were done by the Author at 
fifteen years old." They are the earliest of 
Milton's compositions of which we have record, 
and the only ones dating from the period of 
his school-life at St. Paul's. Whether they 
were self -elected tasks or appointed exercises 
is unknown. The diction employed in them 
shows strongly the influence of the Divine 
Weeks and Works of Du Bartas, made popu- 
lar in England early in the seventeenth century 
through Sylvester's translation. 

1 
When the blest seed of Terah's faithful 

Son 
After long toil their liberty had won, 
And passed from Pharian fields to Canaan- 
land, 
Led by the strength of the Almighty's 
hand, 



PSALM CXXXVI 



Jehovah's wonders were in Israel shown, 


And caused the golden-tressed Sun 


His praise and glory was in Israel known. 


All the day long his course to run; 30 


That saw the troubled sea, and shivering 

fled, 
And sought to hide his froth-becurled head 


For his, &c. 


The horned Moon to shine by night 


Low in the earth; Jordan's clear streams 


Amongst her spangled sisters bright ; 


recoil, 


For his, &c. 


As a faint host that hath received the 




foil. 


He, with his thunder-clasping hand, 


The high huge-bellied mountains skip like 


Smote the first-born of Egypt land; 


rams 


For his, &c. 39 


Amongst their ewes, the little hills like 




lambs. 


And, in despite of Pharao fell, 


Why fled the ocean ? and why skipped the 


He brought from thence his Israel; 


mountains ? 


For his, &c. 


Why turned Jordan toward his crystal 




fountains ? 


The ruddy waves he cleft in twain 


Shake, Earth, and at the presence be aghast 


Of the Erythraean main; 


Of Him that ever was and aye shall last, 


For his, &c. 


That glassy floods from rugged rocks can 




crush, 


The floods stood still, like walls of glass, 


And make soft rills from fiery flint-stones 


While the Hebrew bands did pass; 50 


gush. 


For his, &c. 




But full soon they did devour 


PSALM CXXXVI 


The tawny King with all his power; 




For his, &c. 


Let us with a gladsome mind 




Praise the Lord for he is kind; 


His chosen people he did bless 


For his mercies aye endure, 


In the wasteful Wilderness; 


Ever faithful, ever sure. 


For his, &c. 59 


Let us blaze his Name abroad, 


In bloody battail he brought down 


For of gods he is the God; 


Kings of prowess and renown; 


For his, &c. 


For his, &c. 


let us his praises tell, 


He foiled bold Seon and his host, 


That doth the wrathful tyrants quell; 10 


That ruled the Amorrean coast; 


For his, &c. 


For his, &c. 


That with his miracles doth make 


And large-limbed Og he did subdue, 


Amazed Heaven and Earth to shake ; 


With all his over-hardy crew; 70 


For his, &c. 


For his, &c. 


That by his wisdom did create 


And to his servant Israel 


The painted heavens so full of state; 


He gave their land, therein to dwell; 


For his, &c. 19 


For his, &c. 


That did the solid Earth ordain 


He hath, with a piteous eye, 


To rise above the watery plain; 


Beheld us in our misery; 


For his, &c. 


For his, &c. 79 


That by his all-commanding might, 


And freed us from the slavery 


Did fill the new-made world with light; 


Of the invading enemy; 


For his, &c. 


For his, &c. 



POEMS WRITTEN AT SCHOOL AND AT COLLEGE 



All living creatures he doth feed, 
And with full hand supplies their need; 
For his, &c. 

Let us, therefore, warble forth 
His mighty majesty and worth; ■ 

For his, &c. 

That his mansion hath on high, 
Above the reach of mortal eye; 

For his mercies aye endure, 
Ever faithful, ever sure. 



ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR IN- 
FANT DYING OF A COUGH 

(1625-26) 

The subject of this poem, the first of the 
English poems dating- from Cambridge, was a 
niece of Milton's, the child of his sister Anne 
and of Edward Phillips. The couple had been 
married but a short time, and were living in 
the Strand, near Charing Cross. Their baby's 
death occurred during the severe winter of 
1625-26, which followed upon the devastating 
plague of the autumn, alluded to in the next 
to the last stanza. The reader will remember 
that the Edward and John Phillips who figure 
so prominently in Milton's biography were 
brothers of this child. 



O fairest Flower, no sooner blown but 
blasted, 

Soft silken Primrose fading timelessly, 

Summer's chief honour, if thou hadst out- 
lasted 

Bleak Winter's force that made thy blos- 
som dry; 

For he, being amorous on that lovely dye 
That did thy cheek envermeil, thought 
to kiss, 

But killed, alas ! and then bewailed his fa- 
tal bliss. 

II 

For since grim Aquilo, his charioter, 

By boisterous rape the Athenian damsel 
got, < 9 

He thought it touched his deity full near, 

If likewise he some mm fair one wedded 
not, 

Thereby to wipe away the infamous blot 
Of long uncoupled bed and childless eld, 

Which, 'mongst the wanton gods, a foul re- 
proach was held. 



Ill 

So, mounting up in icy-pearled car, 

Through middle empire of the freezing 
air 

He wandered long, till thee he spied from 
far; 

There ended was his quest, there ceased 
his care: 

Down he descended from his snow-soft 
chair, 
But, all un'wares, with his cold-kind em- 
brace, 20 

Unhoused thy virgin soul from her fair 
biding-place. 



Yet thou art not inglorious in thy fate; 
For so Apollo, with unweeting hand, 
Whilom did slay his dearly-loved mate, 
Young Hyacinth, born on Eurotas' strand, 
Young Hyacinth, the pride of Spartan 

land; 
But then transformed him to a purple 

flower: 
Alack, that so to change thee Winter had 

no power ! 



Yet can I not persuade me thou art dead, 
Or that thy corse corrupts in earth's dark 

womb, 30 

Or that thy beauties lie in wormy bed 
Hid from the world in a low-delved tomb; 
Could Heaven, for pity, thee so strictly 

doom ? 
Oh no ! for something in thy face did 

shine 
Above mortality, that showed thou wast 

divine. 

VI 
Resolve me, then, O Soul most surely blest 
(If so be it that thou these plaints dost 

hear) 
Tell me, bright Spirit, where'er thou hov- 

erest, 
Whether above that high first- moving 

sphere, 
Or in the Elysian fields (if such there 

were), 40 

Oh, say me true if thou wert mortal 

wight, 
And why from us so quickly thou didst 

take thy flight. 



AT A VACATION EXERCISE IN THE COLLEGE 



*3 



VII 

Wert thou some Star, which from the ru- 
ined roof 

Of shaked Olympus by mischance didst 
fall; 

Which careful Jove in nature's true behoof 

Took up, and in fit place did reinstall ? 

Or did of late Earth's sons besiege the wall 
Of sheeny Heaven, and thou some God- 
dess fled 

Amongst us here below to hide thy nectared 
head? 

VIII 

Or wert thou that just Maid who once be- 
fore 50 

Forsook the hated earth, oh ! tell me sooth, 

And earnest again to visit us once more ? 

Or wert thou [Mercy], that sweet smiling 
Youth ? 

Or that crowned Matron, sage white-robed 
Truth ? 
Or any other of that heavenly brood 

Let down in cloudy throne to do the world 
some good ? 

IX 

Or wert thou of the golden-winged host, 
Who, having clad thyself in human weed, 
To earth from thy prefixed seat didst post, 
And after short abode fly back with speed, 
As if to shew what creatures Heaven doth 
breed; 61 

Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire 
To scorn the sordid world, and unto Hea- 
ven aspire ? 



But oh ! why didst thou not stay here be- 
low 

To bless us with thy heaven-loved inno- 
cence, 

To slake his wrath whom sin hath made 
our foe, 

To turn swift-rushing black perdition hence, 

Or drive away the slaughtering pestilence, 
To stand 'twixt us and our deserved 
smart ? 

But thou canst best perform that office 
where thou art. 70 



Then thou, the mother of so sweet a child, 
Her false-imagined loss cease to lament, 



And wisely learn to curb thy sorrows wild ; 
Think what a present thou to God hast 

sent, 
And render him with patience what he 

lent: 
This if thou do, he will an offspring give 
That till the world's last end shall make 

thy name to live. 



AT A VACATION EXERCISE IN 
THE COLLEGE, PART LATIN, 
PART ENGLISH 

(1628) 

Light is thrown upon this curious fragment 
by one of the seven Prolusiones Oratorice, or 
academic speeches, which Milton carefully 
preserved from his undergraduate days, and 
published, along with his Latin Familiar Epis- 
tles, in the last year of his life. The prolusis, 
of which these verses are a fragment, was pre- 
pared for one of those odd festivals, survivals of 
mediaeval university life, in which the students 
of Cambridge managed to unite a half-serious, 
half-burlesque display of learning with fun of 
a more boisterous kind. This particular fes- 
tival fell at the end of the Easter term and 
beginning of the Long Vacation, in July, 1628. 
Milton, then nearing the end of his undergrad- 
uate life, was chosen by the students of Christ's 
to be the " Father " or leader of the ceremo- 
nies, with a number of assistants or "sons" 
under him to help carry out the exercise which 
he should plan. The first part of this exer- 
cise consisted of a discourse, conceived in a 
heavy vein of serio-comedy, on the theme : 
" That occasional indulgence in sportive exer- 
cises is not inconsistent with philosophic stud- 
ies." The second part consisted of a burlesque 
address, delivered in the person of the " Fa- 
ther " to his sons. Both these were in Latin. 
Contrary to the usual custom, Milton, at this 
point in the exercises, abandoned Latin for the 
vulgar tongue. He excused himself for the 
unusual liberty by pronouncing the invocation 
to his native language, which makes up the 
first part of the preserved fragment. Realiz- 
ing, however, that this is a digression, he soon 
checks himself and turns to the business in 
hand ; i. e., the introduction to the audience 
of his sons, each of whom was to deliver a 
speech dramatically appropriate to the char- 
acter assigned him. The characters imper- 
sonated exemplify the quaint dress of pedan- 
try in which college fun was wont in Milton's 
day to be clothed. Milton himself, as Father, 
represented Ens, or the Absolute Being, of 



14 



POEMS WRITTEN AT SCHOOL AND AT COLLEGE 



Aristotelian philosophy ; his sons, ten in num- 
ber, represented Substance and its nine condi- 
tions or accidents, Quantity, Quality, Time, 
Place, etc. These ten, taken together, make 
up the Aristotelian categories, or, as they are 
here called, Predicaments, of being. The sec- 
ond part of the verse-fragments consists of a 
figurative account of Substance, both in him- 
self and as he is affected by the nine accidents. 
Although thus elaborately introduced, Sub- 
stance does not speak, perhaps because it is only 
when affected by the accidents that substance 
becomes perceptible. The prose speeches of 
Quantity, Quality, and the other accidents, have 
not been preserved. It only remains to be 
noted that the part of Relation was taken by 
one of the two sons, George and Nizell, of Sir 
John Rivers, then freshmen at Christ's. The 
last ten lines of the fragment constitutes a 
punning allusion to the name. 

The Latin speeches ended, the English thus be- 
gan : — 

Hail, Native Language, that by sinews 

weak, 
Didst move iny first-endeavouring tongue 

to speak, 
And madest imperfect words, with childish 

trips, 
Half unpronounced, slide through my in- 
fant lips, 
Driving dumb Silence from the portal door, 
Where he had mutely sat two years before : 
Here I salute thee, and thy pardon ask, 
That now I use thee in my latter task: 
Small loss it is that thence can come unto 

thee, 
I know my tongue but little grace can do 
thee. 10 

Thou need'st not be ambitious to be first, 
Believe me, I have thither packed the 

worst: 
And, if it happen as I did forecast, 
The daintiest dishes shall be served up last. 
I pray thee then deny me not thy aid, 
For this same small neglect that I have 

made; 
But haste thee straight to do me once a 

pleasure, 
And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest 

treasure ; 
Not those new-fangled toys, and trimming 

slight 
Which takes our late fantastics with de- 
light; 20 
But cull those richest robes and gayest at- 
tire, 



Which deepest spirits and choicest wits 
desire. 

I have some naked thoughts that rove 
about, 

And loudly knock to have their passage 
out, 

And, weary of their place, do only stay 

Till thou hast decked them in thy best ar- 
ray; 

That so they may, without suspect or fears, 

Fly swiftly to this fair Assembly's ears. 

Yet I had rather, if I were to choose, 

Thy service in some graver subject use, 30 

Such as may make thee search thy coffers 
round, 

Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound: 

Such where the deep transported mind may 
soar 

Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven's 
door 

Look in, and see each blissful Deity 

How he before the thunderous throne doth 
lie, 

Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings 

To the touch of golden wires, while Hebe 
brings 

Immortal nectar to her kingly Sire ; 

Then, passing through the spheres of 
watchful fire, 4 o 

And misty regions of wide air next under, 

And hills of snow and lofts of piled thun- 
der, 

May tell at length how green-eyed Nep- 
tune raves, 

In heaven's defiance mustering all his 
waves ; 

Then sing of secret things that came to 
pass 

When beldam Nature in her cradle was; 

And last of Kings and Queens and Heroes 
old, 

Such as the wise Demodocus once told 

In solemn songs at king Alcinoiis' feast, 

While sad Ulysses' soul and all the rest 50 

Are held, with his melodious harmony, 

In willing chains and sweet captivity. 

But fie, my wandering Muse, how thou dost 
stray ! 

Expectance calls thee now another way. 

Thou know'st it must be now thy only 
bent 

To keep in compass of thy Predicament. 

Then quick about thy purposed business 
come, 

That to the next I may resign my room. 



THE PASSION 



i5 



Then Ens is represented as Father of the Pre- 
dicaments, his ten Sons ; ivhereof the eldest 
stood for Substance with his Canons; which 
Ens, thus speaking, explains : — 

Good luck befriend thee, son; for at thy 

birth 
The faery Ladies danced upon the hearth. 
The drowsy Nurse hath sworn she did them 

spy 61 

Come tripping to the room where thou 

didst lie, 
And, sweetly singing round about thy bed, 
Strew all their blessings on thy sleeping 

head. 
She heard them give thee this, that thou 

shouldst still 
From eyes of mortals walk invisible. 
Yet there is something that doth force my 

fear; 
For once it was my dismal hap to hear 
A Sibyl old, bow-bent with crooked age, 69 
That far events full wisely could presage, 
And, in Time's long and dark prospective- 
glass, 
Foresaw what future days should bring to 



" Your Son," said she, " (nor can you it 
prevent,) 

Shall subject be to many an Accident. 

O'er all his Brethren he shall reign as 
King; 

Yet every one shall make him underling, 

And those that cannot live from him asun- 
der 

Ungratefully shall strive to keep him un- 
der. 

In worth and excellence he shall outgo 
them; 

Yet, being above them, he shall be below 
them. 80 

From others he shall stand in need of no- 
thing, 

Yet on his Brothers shall depend for cloth- 
ing. 

To find a foe it shall not be his hap, 

And peace shall lull him in her flowery 
lap ; 

Yet shall he live in strife, and at his door 

Devouring war shall never cease to roar; 

Yea, it shall be his natural property 

To harbour those that are at enmity." 

What power, what force, what mighty spell, 
if not 

Your learned hands, can loose this Gordian 
knot ? 90 



The next, Quantity and Quality, spake in 
prose: then Relation was called by his 
name. 

Rivers, arise: whether thou be the son 
Of utmost Tweed, or Ouse, or gulfy Dun, 
Or Trent, who, like some earth-born Giant, 

spreads 
His thirty arms along the indented meads, 
Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath, 
Or Sevren swift, guilty of maiden's death, 
Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lea, 
Or coaly Tyne, or ancient hallowed Dee, 
Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythian's 

name, 
Or Medway smooth, or royal - towered 

Thame. 100 

The rest was prose. 



THE PASSION 

(1630) 

This was begun as a companion-piece to the 
" Ode on the Nativity," and probably dates 
from the Easter Season of 1630. The chilly 
conceitfulness of many of the lines contrasts 
remarkably with the eager and inspired tone 
of the Ode. If it were not for the explicit 
statement of the opening lines, we should be 
inclined to attribute this poem to an earlier 
date. 

I 

Erewhile of music, and ethereal mirth, 
Wherewith the stage of Air and Earth did 

ring, 
And joyous news of heavenly Infant's birth, 
My muse with Angels did divide to sing; 
But headlong joy is ever on the wing, 
In wintry solstice like the shortened 
light 
Soon swallowed up in dark and long outliv- 
ing night. 



For now to sorrow must I tune my song, 
And set my Harp to notes of saddest woe, 
Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere 
long, 10 

Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse 

than so, 
Which he for us did freely undergo: 

Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest 
plight 
Of labours huge and hard, too hard for hu- 
man wight ! 



i6 



POEMS WRITTEN AT SCHOOL AND AT COLLEGE 



He, sovran Priest, stooping his regal head, 

That dropt with odorous oil down his fair 
eyes, 

Poor fleshly Tabernacle entered, 

His starry front low-roofed beneath the 
skies: 

Oh, what a mask was there, what a dis- 
guise ! 
Yet more: the stroke of death he must 
abide ; 20 

Then lies him meekly down fast by his 
Brethren's side. 

IV 

These latest scenes confine my roving 
verse ; 

To this horizon is my Phcebus bound. 

His godlike acts, and his temptations fierce, 

And former sufferings, otherwhere are 
found ; 

Loud o'er the rest Cremona's trump doth 
sound : 
Me softer airs befit, and softer strings 

Of lute, or viol still, more apt for mourn- 
ful things. 



Befriend me, Night, best Patroness of 

grief ! 
Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw, 
And work my flattered fancy to belief 31 
That Heaven and Earth are coloured with 

my woe; 
My sorrows are too dark for day to know: 
The leaves should all be black whereon 

I write, 
And letters, where my tears have washed, 

a wannish white. 

VI 
See, see the chariot, and those rushing 

wheels, 
That whirled the prophet up at Chebar 

flood ; 
My spirit some transporting Cherub feels 
To bear me where the Towers of Salem 

stood, 
Once glorious towers, now sunk in guiltless 

blood. 40 

There doth my soul in holy vision sit, 
In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic 

fit. 



VII 

Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral 
rock 

That was the casket of Heaven's richest 
store, 

And here, though grief my feeble hands 
up-lock, 

Yet on the softened quarry would I score 

My plaining verse as lively as before ; 
For sure so well instructed are my tears 

That they would fitly fall in ordered char- 
acters. 

VIII 

Or, should I thence, hurried on viewless 
wing, 50 

Take up a weeping on the mountains wild, 

The gentle neighbourhood of grove and 
spring 

Would soon unbosom all their Echoes 
mild; 

And I (for grief is easily beguiled) 

Might think the infection of my sorrows 
loud 

Had got a race of mourners on some preg- 
nant cloud. 

This Subject the Author finding to be above the 
years he had when he wrote it, and nothing sat- 
isfied with what was begun, left it unfinished. 



ON SHAKESPEARE 

(1630) 

These lines first appeared, along- with other 
commendatory verses by various authors, pre- 
fixed to the second folio edition of Shake- 
speare, published in 1632. They are, however, 
dated two years earlier in the 1645 edition of 
Milton's poems. The original title is, " An 
Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatick Poet, 
W. Shakespeare." 

What needs my Shakespeare, for his hon- 
oured bones, 
The labour of an age in piled stones ? 
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid 
Under a star-ypointing pyramid ? 
Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame, 
What need'st thou such weak witness of 

thy name ? 
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment 
Hast built thyself a livelong monument. 



ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER 



'7 



For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavour- 
ing art, 

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each 
heart 

Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued 
book, 

Those Delphic lines with deep impression 
took; 

Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, 

Dost make us marble, with too much con- 
ceiving; 

And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie, 

That kings for such a tomb would wish to 
die. 



ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER 

Who sickened in the time of his Vacancy, being 
forbid to go to London by reason of the Plague 

(163O 

Thomas Hobson, the University carrier or 
" expressman," was a well-known figure in 
Cambridge during Milton's undergraduateship. 
For more than half a century he had driven a 
coach between the university and the Bull Inn, 
in Bishopsgate Street, London, carrying let- 
ters, parcels, and passengers. In the spring 
of 1630 the plague, which was then raging in 
various parts of England, broke out in the col- 
leges so violently that all academic exercises 
had to be suspended. As a precaution against 
the spread of the disease, the coach commu- 
nication with London was stopped, and old 
Hobson, at the age of 86, found his occupation 
gone. When the colleges opened in November 
the plague had abated, but Hobson was unable 
to resume his journeys ; he died on the 1st of 
January, 1631, killed, Milton humorously sup- 
poses, by the tedium of his enforced idleness. 
In connection with his coaching, Hobson kept 
a stable of horses, which he let out to the stu- 
dents and officers of the University. These he 
assigned by rotation, never allowing the per- 
sonal preference of a customer to determine 
his mount ; hence arose the phrase " Hobson's 
choice." 

Here lies old Hobson. Death hath broke 
his girt, 

And here, alas ! hath laid him in the dirt; 

Or else, the ways being foul, twenty to one 

He 's here stuck in a slough, and over- 
thrown. 

'T was such a shifter that, if truth were 
known. 



Death was half glad when he had got him 

down ; 
For he had any time this ten years full 
Dodged with him betwixt Cambridge and 

The Bull. 
And surely Death could never have pre- 
vailed, 
Had not his weekly course of carriage 

failed; 10 

But lately, finding him so long at home, 
And thinking now his journey's end was 

come, 
And that he had ta'en up his latest Inn, 
In the kind office of a Chamberlin 
Showed him his room where he must lodge 

that night, 
Pulled off his boots, and took away the 

light. 
If any ask for him, it shall be said, 
" Hobson has supped, and 's newly gone to 

bed." 



ANOTHER ON THE SAME 

Here lieth one who did most truly prove 

That he could never die while he could 
move ; 

So hung his destiny, never to rot 

While he might still jog on and keep his 
trot; 

Made of sphere-metal, never to decay 

Until his revolution was at stay. 

Time numbers Motion, yet (without a 
crime 

'Gainst old truth) Motion numbered out 
his time; 

And, like an engine moved with wheel and 
weight, 

His principles being ceased, he ended 
straight. 10 

Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his 
death, 

And too much breathing put him out of 
breath ; 

Nor were it contradiction to affirm 

Too long vacation hastened on his term. 

Merely to drive the time away he sick- 
ened, 

Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be 
quickened. 

" Nay," quoth he, on his swooning bed out- 
stretched, 

" If I may n't carry, sure I '11 ne'er be 
fetched, 



i8 



POEMS WRITTEN AT SCHOOL AND AT COLLEGE 



But vow, though the cross Doctors all stood 
hearers, 

For one carrier put down to make six bear- 
ers." 20 

Ease was his chief disease; and, to judge 
right, 

He died for heaviness that his cart went 
light. 

His leisure told him that his time was 
come, 

And lack of load made his life burdensome, 

That even to his last breath (there be that 
say 't), 

As he were pressed to death, he cried, 
" More weight ! " 

But, had his doings lasted as they were, 

He had been an immortal Carrier. 

Obedient to the moon he spent his date 

In course reciprocal, and had his fate 30 

Linked to the mutual flowing of the seas; 

Yet (strange to think) his wain was his in- 
crease. 

His letters are delivered all and gone; 

Only remains this superscription. 



AN EPITAPH ON THE MAR- 
CHIONESS OF WINCHESTER 

The subject of this epitaph was Jane, wife 
of John Paulet, fifth Marquis of Winchester, 
and daughter of Thomas, Viscount Savage. 
She was noted for her beauty and intelligence ; 
and her death in childbirth, at the age of 
twenty-three, evoked besides the present poem 
an elaborate tribute from the poet-laureate, 
Ben Jonson. What led Milton to write upon 
her death is unknown, as no record of any con- 
nection between him and the Marchioness has 
reached us. It is possible that the George and 
Nizell Rivers, addressed in the Vacation Exer- 
cise, were her relatives, since her mother was 
a daughter of the Earl of Rivers. If so, Mil- 
ton's acquaintance with them would perhaps 
have afforded an adequate incentive. 

This rich marble doth inter 

The honoured wife of Winchester, 

A viscount's daughter, an earl's heir, 

Besides what her virtues fair 

Added to her noble birth, 

More than she could own from earth. 

Summers three times eight save one 

She had told; alas ! too soon, 

After so short time of breath, 

To house with darkness and with death ! 10 



Yet, had the number of her days 

Been as complete as was her praise, 

Nature and Fate had had no strife 

In giving limit to her life. 

Her high birth and her graces sweet 

Quickly found a lover meet; 

The virgin quire for her request 

The god that sits at marriage-feast; 

He at their invoking came, 

But with a scarce well-lighted flame; 20 

And in his garland, as he stood. 

Ye might discern a cypress-bud. 

Once had the early Matrons run 

To greet her of a lovely son, 

And now with second hope she goes, 

And calls Lucina to her throes; 

But, whether by mischance or blame, 

Atropos for Lucina came, 

And with remorseless cruelty 

Spoiled at once both fruit and tree. 30 

The hapless babe before his birth 

Had burial, yet not laid in earth; 

And the languished mother's womb 

Was not long a living tomb. 

So have I seen some tender slip, 

Saved with care from Winter's nip, 

The pride of her carnation train, 

Plucked up by some unheedy swain, 

Who only thought to crop the flower 

New shot up from vernal shower; 40 

But the fair blossom hangs the head 

Sideways, as on a dying bed, 

And those pearls of dew she wears 

Prove to be presaging tears 

Which the sad morn had let fall 

On her hastening funeral. 

Gentle Lady, may thy grave 

Peace and quiet ever have ! 

After this thy travail sore, 

Sweet rest seize thee evermore, 50 

That, to give the world encrease, 

Shortened hast thy own life's lease ! 

Here, besides the sorrowing 

That thy noble House doth bring, 

Here be tears of perfect moan 

Weept for thee in Helicon; 

And some flowers and some bays 

For thy hearse, to strew the ways, 

Sent thee from the banks of Came, 

Devoted to thy virtuous name ; 60 

Whilst thou, bright Saint, high sitt'st in 

glory, 
Next her, much like to thee in story, 
That fair Syrian Shepherdess, 
Who, after years of barrenness, 



ON BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE 19 



The highly-favoured Joseph bore 

To him that served for her before, 

And at her next birth, much like thee, 

Through pangs fled to felicity, 

Far within the bosom bright 

Of blazing Majesty and Light: 70 

There with thee, new-welcome Saint, 

Like fortunes may her soul acquaint, 

With thee there clad in radiant sheen, 

No Marchioness, but now a Queen. 



ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO 
THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE 

(1631) 

This sonnet was written at Cambridge, 
shortly before Milton took his Master's degree. 
After he had left Cambridge for Horton, he 
sent the sonnet to a friend, whose name is now 
unknown, enclosed in a letter replying to cer- 
tain exhortations which that friend had made 
to him concerning his apparent idleness and 
aimlessness. After setting forth the reasons 
which deterred him from entering the church, 
Milton says : " That you may see that I am 
something suspicious of myself, and do take 



notice of a certain belatedness in me, I am the 
bolder to send you some of my nightward 
thoughts some little while ago, because they 
come in not altogether unfitly, made up in a 
Petrarchian stanza." 

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of 
youth, 

Stolen on his wing my three and twen- 
tieth year ! 

My hasting days fly on with full ca- 
reer, 

But my late spring no bud or blossom 
shew'th. 
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the 
truth, 

That I to manhood am arrived so near, 

And inward ripeness doth much less ap- 
pear, 

That some more timely-happy spirits in- 
du'th. 
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, 

It shall be still in strictest measure even 

To that same lot, however mean or high, 
Toward which Time leads me, and the will 
of Heaven. 

All is, if I have grace to use it so, 

As ever in my great Task-master's eye. 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 

1632-1638 

AND IN ITALY 

1638-1639 



'^d-tfj£2^*r 






EGRO AND IL 



C^^J^ 



PEN'SEROSO 



The initial idea of the twin poems, 
L 'Allegro and 11 Penseroso, may be traced 
with considerable probability to a poem 
prefixed to Burton's Anatomy of Melan- 
choly, a book which is in the list of Mil- 
ton's reading at Horton. The verses are 
entitled " The Author's Abstract of Melan- 
choly; or, A Dialogue Between Pleasure 
and Pain." The following extracts will 
give a fair idea of them: — 

" When I go musing 1 all alone, 
Thinking of divers things foreknown, 
When I build castles in the air, 
Void of sorrow, void of fear, 
Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet, 

When to myself I act and smile, 
With pleasing thoughts the time beguile, 
By a brookside or wood so green, 
Unheard, unsought for, and unseen, 
Methinks I hear, methinks I see, 
Sweet music, wondrous melody, 
Towns, palaces, and cities fine ; 
Here now, then there, the world is mine : 
Rare beauties, gallant ladies, shine, 
Whate'er is lovely or divine. 
All other joys to this are folly ; 
Nought so sweet as Melancholy." 

An idea so congenial as this to Milton's 
contemplative nature, and so imperfectly 
expressed, would naturally tease his artis- 
tic fancy, especially when the seclusion of 
country life gave him ample opportunity 
to taste the pleasures which Burton cele- 
brates. It is not improbable that he found 
a further stimulus in a pretty song in 
Beaumont and Fletcher's play entitled 
Nice Valour. The play was not published, 
it is true, until 1647, fifteen years after the 
probable date of V Allegro and II Pense- 
roso; but as Francis Beaumont died in 1625, 



and the play in question was a joint produc- 
tion of his and Fletcher's, the song was in 
all probability popular before Milton wrote. 
It begins just in the strain of II Penseroso, 
and contains details of which certain well- 
known passages in the latter poem seem 
expansions : — 

" Hence, all you vain delights, 
As short as are the nights 
Wherein you spend your folly ! 

Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes, 

Fountain heads and pathless groves, 
Places which pale passion loves ; 
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 
Are warmly housed, save bats and owls. 
A midnight bell, a parting groan, 
These are the sounds we feed upon. 

Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley ; 

Nothing 's so dainty - sweet as lovely Melan- 
choly." 

The scheme of contrasts in U Allegro and 
II Penseroso may also have been suggested 
by Burton's verses; for he gives, as a run- 
ning antithesis to the pleasures of the mild 
contemplative type of melancholy, alter- 
nate verses dealing with the darker aspects 
of that mood of mind, ending with the em- 
phatic refrain, — 

" All my griefs to this are jolly, 
None so damned as Melancholy." 

Milton has lifted this contrast to the other 
side of the scale, placing over against the 
sweetness of contemplation the sweetness 
of frank and open mirth and delight in 
the outward aspects of things. 

In the case of vital literature, however, 
such external indications of origin go at 
best a very little way toward explaining 



2 3 



24 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



its genesis. The poems noted above un- 
doubtedly furnished an inceptive hint, and 
Marlowe's famous lyric, " The Passionate 
Shepherd to his Love," supplied a line or 
two. Of more interest to consider are the 
subjective conditions antecedent to or ac- 
companying the production of the poem. 
It was written in a transition period of the 
author's life, when the exuberance of youth 
was giving way to the soberness of man- 
hood, and when, too, the Elizabethan influ- 
ences in the immediate world about him 
were rapidly falling back before the ad- 
vancing shadow of Puritanism. We are 
apt to think of Milton only in his grimmer 
shape, after his character had hardened 
under the pressure of his gigantic will. 
One has but to read, however, among the 
early Latin poems, the first and the seventh 
elegies and the verses " On the Approach 
of Spring " {In Adventum Veris), to under- 
stand that his veins in youth were full of 
as heady a wine as the most radical hu- 
manist could wish for him. The " Sonnet 
to the Nightingale," ushering in his Horton 
period, is a pure troubadour song, eloquent 
of the longing for joy which is the intoler- 
able obsession of youth. All these centri- 
fugal tendencies, urging him out to seek 
the " joy in widest commonalty spread," 
were opposed by constantly growing in- 
stincts toward abstraction from the world 
of sense, a retiring upon self to find the 
elements of a more visionary and abiding 
happiness. 

L' Allegro and 11 Penseroso are a kind of 
summing up of these two possible attitudes 
toward life. Milton was not prepared to 
champion either attitude in a partisan 
spirit. He felt the appeal of both in his 
own nature; they were the two sides of a 
balanced life. Yet he must have recog- 
nized the practical impossibility of combin- 
ing them in their perfect fullness, and have 
felt a certain personal satisfaction in setting 
forth clearly, though in a poetic guise, the 
rational claims of each upon his sympathy. 
The problem, if such it can be called, was 



of course still rather remote and unreal: he 
did not foresee the solution which circum- 
stance was soon to thrust upon him, in the 
shape of a life lived for ideal ends through 
days of dusty publicity. 

A good deal of discussion on the part of 
commentators has followed Professor Mas- 
son's remark that the two poems each nar- 
rate the events of " an ideal day, a day of 
twelve hours." A brief analysis will make 
the points of the discussion clear. 

& Allegro begins, after the preliminary 
verses in banishment of Melancholy and 
the invocation of Mirth and her compan- 
ions, with the lark's song at dawn. Then 
follow, in swift succession, typical glimpses 
of morning life in the country, the crowing 
of the cock, the baying of hounds, and the 
winding of the hunter's horn, the milkmaid 
singing across the sunrise fields, the shep- 
herd counting his sheep as they come from 
the fold. Through these sights and sounds 
the poet passes, himself " not unseen," i. e., 
greeted and greeting, toward the hillock 
whence he can view " the great sun begin 
his state." The landscape description which 
follows, of mountains, meadows, brooks, 
and battlemented towers, is without indi- 
cation of the time of day; but the picture 
of Corydon and Thyrsis at their dinner of 
herbs apprises us that the chronological or- 
der is still adhered to. The merry-making 
on the green of some " upland hamlet," 
whither the poet now strays, may very well 
fall in the late afternoon, and the nut brown 
ale and the goblin tales by the fire bring the 
" ideal day " to a close. Up to this point, 
only one circumstance disturbs the even 
development of the theme, namely, the 
mention of the " hoar hill " on which the 
hunters are heard, — an autumnal detail 
irreconcilable with the midsummer picture. 

Here, however, the development changes 
abruptly ; and with the words, — 

" Towered cities please us then, 
And. the busy hum of men," 

the mind is led away to the more splendid 



L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 



2 5 



spectacles of court and theatre, the pa- 
geantry of princely marriages, with their 
accompaniment of masques and processions, 
or to such survivals of the mediaeval tour- 
naments and courts of love as England 
could show under the Stuarts. It would 
seem to be a forcing of the " ideal day " 
theory of the poem to take this, not liter- 
ally — as an abrupt transfer of the scene to 
the city, where L'Allegro, or " the cheer- 
ful man," is an eye-witness of these high 
festivities, — but fancifully, as something 
which he reads about after he has left the 
company of rustic story-tellers creeping to 
bed, and has himself retired to end his 
evening with his books. Either interpre- 
tation is possible, however, and the reader 
is free to choose for himself. It may per- 
haps strengthen the latter interpretation 
to notice that this indication, if such it is, 
of the kind of reading in which L'Allegro 
delights, is supplemented by a description 
of the kind of music which especially ap- 
peals to him, songs full of lively trills and 
cadenzas, as opposed to the sylvan dream- 
music, the organ peal, and the solemn an- 
them, which II Penseroso loves. 

The second poem answers the first, part 
to part. There is the preliminary banish- 
ing of Joy, in the same measure of alter- 
nate pentameters and trimeters, followed by 
an invocation of Melancholy with her ap- 
propriate train of attendants. The " ideal 
day " opens here at evening. II Penseroso, 
" the meditative man," listens to the night- 
ingale in the woods, hears the curfew roll 
across the water to the headland where he 
stands, or walks across the mowed hay- 
fields watching the midnight moon. Here, 
however, the temporal sequence breaks 
down altogether; for he is one moment in 
the city listening to the call of the night- 
watch, and the next in the lonely tower of 
a castle or moated grange, deep in Plato 
and Hermes Trismegistus. It is an inci- 
dental refutation of the more fanciful in- 
terpretation of the lines in U Allegro begin- 
ning, " Towered cities please us then," that 



here, in the midnight studies of II Pense- 
roso, Milton gives prominence to romantic 
tales of chivalry which would be identical 
in mood with the sights which L'Allegro 
describes, provided both were seen only 
with the eye of fancy. 

When the dawn comes it is ushered in, 
not with bird songs and cock crow, but 
with gusty winds and the sound of dripping 
eaves. The poet walks abroad, but not to 
note the bustle of the waking world, much 
less to mingle in it. Instead, he buries 
himself in a twilight grove, where the 
murmur of bees and waters invite to slum- 
ber. For him the airy stream of portrait- 
ure which dream displays is livelier than 
the vision of external fact. When he wakes, 
it is to seek the places where life comes 
nearest to dream, the cloister and the 
cathedral. The lines beginning, — 

" But let my due feet never fail 
To walk the studious cloister's pale," 

coming as they do in symmetrical contrast 
with the disputed passage of the Allegro, — 

" Towered cities please us then," etc., 

prove by implication that the latter pas- 
sage is to be taken literally. If anything 
more were needed to invalidate the strict 
application of the " ideal day " theory of 
the structure of the two poems, it would be 
supplied by the concluding passage of the 
Penseroso, where the poet looks forward to 
old age in a forest hermitage. 

The result of the analysis seems to be 
that Milton did strive to give the poems 
continuity of development by following in 
some measure the typical happenings of 
twenty-four hours in two contrasted lives, 
or rather in two contrasted moods of a 
single life; but that he left himself per- 
fectly free to dispense with this frame- 
work wherever by so doing he could widen 
the meaning or intensify the beauty of his 
theme. 

Milton was not a minute observer of na- 
ture. He does not picture her outward 



26 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



aspects with that kind of fidelity which 
continually makes a new and surprising 
revelation of common things. He has not 
the delicate half-savage woodcraft by vir- 
tue of which some poets surprise her at her 
shy rites. His nature-pictures, if not con- 
ventional, are conventionalized. He paints, . 
for the most part, in the broad typical way 
of the Dutch landscape school, — a style 
which is fatally dull in second-rate hands, 
but which, in the hands of a consummate 
artist, leads to a classical permanency and 
largeness of effect. It is because Mil- 
ton's hand is consummate that we can read 
and re-read the Allegro and Penseroso, sure 
of a calm, renewed delight, when more 
thrilling poetry may have exhausted its 
power to charm after the first appeal. 

The language of these two little master- 
pieces has been the despair of poets. It is 
not that it is so beautiful, for others have 
equaled or excelled it in the mere conjur- 
ing power of suggestion ; but that it is, as 
a French critic has finely said, so just in its 
beauty. The means are exquisitely propor- 
tioned to the end. The speech incarnates 
the thought as easily, as satisfyingly, as the 
muscles of a Phidian youth incarnate the 
motor-impulse of his brain. Always frui- 
tion is just gently touched. To the con- 
noisseur in language there is a sensation of 
almost physical soothing in its perfect poise 
and play. 

The metre of these poems, notwithstand- 
ing its simplicity, will repay careful study. 
Disregarding the inductions, we perceive 
the metrical norm to be the line of eight 
syllables, the stresses falling on the even 
syllables, — 

L'ALLEGRO 

(1633) 

Hence, loathed Melancholy, 

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born, 
In Stygian cave forlorn, 

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and 
sights unholy, 



" But come', thou God'dess fair' and free'." 
This metre (iambic tetrameter) was a fa- 
vorite one with Milton's predecessors and 
contemporaries, but had shown itself co 
have two great weaknesses. It was prone 
to degenerate into monotony and into tri- 
viality. 

Milton avoids the first danger by a lib- 
eral use of seven-syllable lines, with the 
initial stress falling on the first syllable : — 

Come', and trip' it as' you go', 

a variation which gives a buoyant lilting 
effect to the verse, and sends it on with 
elastic freshness whenever it is in danger 
of becoming spiritless. It will be noticed, 
however, that this tripping measure is never 
introduced arbitrarily, for mere variety's 
sake, but always in answer to some bright- 
ening of mood in the thought itself, such as 
the quoted line illustrates. With this in 
mind, it will be instructive to compare the 
invocation of Mirth and her gay train with 
that of Melancholy and her sober attend- 
ants. 

To show by what means Milton avoided 
the second danger to which the metre is 
exposed, that of degenerating into trivial- 
ity, would be to put our finger on one of 
the mysteries of the creative mind. A 
great composer has recently employed the 
negro melodies and jigs of the southern 
states as the leading themes in an imposing 
symphony. In somewhat the same way 
Milton here raises a half-doggerel metre 
into dignity. The real artist never shows 
himself so well as when he works in a 
homely medium, communicating to it his 
own distinction. 



Find out some uncouth cell, 

Where brooding Darkness spreads his 
jealous wings, 
And the night-raven sings; 

There under ebon shades, and low-browed 
rocks, 
As ragged as thy locks, 

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 10 
But come, thou Goddess fair and free, 






L'ALLEGRO 



27 



In heaven yclep'd Euphrosyne, 
And by men, heart-easing Mirth, 

/ Whom lovely Venus at a birth 
With two sister Graces more 

To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;,/. V 

Or whether (as some sager sing) 

The frolic Wind that breathes the spring, 

Zephyr with Aurora playing, 

As he met her once a-Maying, 20 

There on beds of violets blue, 

And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, 

Filled her with thee, a daughter fair, 

So buxom, blithe, and debonair. 

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring 1 with thee 
Jest and youthful Jollity, ' '■ . 

Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, 
Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles, 
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, 
And love to live in dimple sleek; 30 

Sport that wrinkled Care derides, 
And Laughter holding both his sides. 
Come, and trip it as ye go, 
On the light fantastic toe; 
And in thy right hand lead with thee 
The mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty; 
And, if I give thee honour due, 
Mirth, admit me of thy crew, 
To live with her, and live with thee, 
In imreproved pleasures free; 40 

To hear the lark begin his flight, 
And singing startle the dull night, 
From his watch-tower in the skies, 

/Tjll the dappled Dawn doth rise; j 
TEen to come, in spite of sorrow, 
And at my window bid good-morrow, 
Through the sweet-briar or the vine, 
Or the twisted eglantine; 
While the cock with lively din 
Scatters the rear of Darkness thin; 50 

And to the stack, or the barn-door, 
Stoutly struts his dames before: 
Oft listening how the hounds and horn 
Cheerly rouse the slumbering Morn, 
From the side of some hoar hill, — \ — 
Through the high wood echoing shrill: 
Sometime walking, not unseen, 
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, 
Right against the eastern gate, 
Where the great Sun begins his state, 60 
Robed in flames and amber light, 
The clouds in thousand liveries dight; 
While the ploughman, near at hand, 
Whistles o'er the furrowed land, 
And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 
And the mower whets his scythe, 



And every shepherd tells his tale 
Under the hawthorn in the dale. -| 

Straight mine eye hath caught new plea- 
sures, 
Whilst the lantskip round it measures: 70 
Russet lawns, and fallows gray, 
Where the nibbling flocks do stray; 
Mountains on whose barren breast 
The labouring clouds do often rest; 
Meadows trim with daisies pied; 
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide. 
Towers and battlements it sees 
Bosomed high in tufted trees, 
Where perhaps some Beauty lies, 
The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes. 80 

Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes 
From betwixt two aged oaks, 
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met 
Are at their savoury dinner set 
Of hearbs and other country messes, 
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses; 
And then in haste her bower she leaves, 
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves; 
Or, if the earlier season lead, 
To the tanned haycock in the mead. 90 

Sometimes with secure delight 
The upland hamlets will invite, 
When the merry bells ring round, 
And the jocond rebecks sound 
To many a youth and many a maid 
Dancing in the chequered shade; 
And young and old come forth to play 
On a sunshine holyday, 
Till the livelong daylight fail: 
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, 100 

With stories told of many a feat, 
How fairy Mab the junkets eat: 
She was pinched and pulled, she said; 
And he, by Friar's lanthorn led, 
Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat 
To earn his cream-bowl duly set, 
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, 
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn 
That ten day-labourers could not end; 
Then lies him down, the lubbar fend, no 
And, stretched out all the chimney's length, 
Basks at the fire his hairy strength, 
And crop-full out of doors he flings, 
Ere the first cock his matin rings. 
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, 
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep. 
Towered cities please us then, 
And the busy hum of men, 
Where throngs of Knights and Barons 
bold, 



28 



POEMS WRITTEN AT 



In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold, 120 
With store of Ladies, whose bright eyes 
Rain influence, and judge the prize 
Of wit or arms, while both contend 
To win her grace whom all commend. 
There let Hymen oft appear 
In saffron robe, with taper clear, 
And pomp, and feast, and revelry, 
With mask and antique pageantry; 
Such sights as youthful Poets dream 
On summer eves by haunted stream. 130 
Then to the well-trod stage anon, 
If Jonson's learned sock be on, 
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 
Warble his native wood-notes wild.^L 
And ever, against eating cares, 
Lap me in soft Lydian airs, 
Married to immortal verse, 
"Such as the meeting soul may pierce, 
In notes with many a winding bout 
Of linked sweetness long drawn out 140 

With wanton heed and giddy cunning, 
The melting voice through mazes running, 
Untwisting all the chains that tie 
The hidden soul of harmony; 
That Orpheus' self may heave his head 
From golden slumber on a bed 
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear 
Such strains as would have won the ear 
Of Pluto to have quite set free 
His half-regained Eurydice. 150 

These delights if thou canst give, 
Mirth, with thee I mean to live. 



IL PENSEROSO 

(1633) 

Hence, vain deluding Joys, 

The brood of Folly without father bred ! 
How little you bested, 

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys ! 
Dwell in some idle brain, 

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes pos- 
sess, 
As thick and numberless 

As the gay motes that people the sun- 
beams, 
Or likest hovering dreams, 

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. 
But, hail ! thou Goddess sage and holy ! 1 1 
Hail, divinest Melancholy ! 
Whose saintly visage is too bright 
To hit the sense of human sight, 



And therefore to our weaker view 
O'erlaid wifch black, staid Wisdom's hue; 
Black, but such as in esteem 
Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, 
Or that starred jSthiop Queen that strove 
To set her beauty's praise above 20 

The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers of- 
fended. 
Yet thou art higher far descended: 
Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore 
To solitary Saturn bore; 
His daughter she; in Saturn's reign 
Such mixture was not held a stain. 
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades 
He met her, and in secret shades 
Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove. 30 
Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure, 
Sober, steadfast, and demure, 
All in a robe of darkest grain, 
Flowing with majestic train, 
And sable stole of cypress lawn 
Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 
Come; but keep thy wonted state, 
With even step, and musing gait, 
And looks commercing with the skies, 
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: 40 

There, held in holy passion still, 
Forget thyself to marble, till 
With a sad leaden downward cast 
Thou fix them on the earth as fast. 
And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet, 
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet, 
And hears the Muses in a ring 
Aye round about Jove's altar sing; 
And add to these retired Leisure, 
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure ; 50 
But, first and chiefest, with thee bring 
Him that yon soars on golden wing, 
Guiding the fiery- wheeled throne, 
r ^he Cherub Contemplation; 
And the mute Silence hist along, 
'Less Philomel will deign a song, 
In her sweetest saddest plight, 
Smoothing the rugged brow of Night, 
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke 
Gently o'er the accustomed oak. 60 / 

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, 

Most musical, most melancholy ! -^ 

Thee, Chauntress, oft the woods among 
I woo, to hear thy even-song; 
And, missing thee, I walk unseen 
On the dry smooth-shaven green, 
To behold the wandering Moon, 
Riding near her highest noon, 



IL PENSEROSO 



29 



Like one that had been led astray- 
Through the heaven's wide pathless way, 
And oft, as if her head she bowed, 7 

Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 
Oft, on a plat of rising ground, 
I hear the far-off curfew sound, 
Over some wide-watered shore, 
Swinging slow with sullen roar; 
Or, if the air will not permit, 
Some still removed place will fit, 
Where glowing embers through the room 
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, 8 

Far from all resort of mirth, 
Save the cricket on the hearth, 
Or the Bellman's drowsy charm 
To bless the doors from nightly harm 
Or let my lamp, at midnight hour, 
Be seen in some high lonely tower, 
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear, 
With thrice-great Hermes; or unspheie 
The spirit of Plato, to unfold 
What worlds or what vast regions hold 90 
The immortal mind that hath forsook 
Her mansion in this fleshly nook; 
And of those Daemons that are found 
In fire, air, flood, or underground, 
Whose power hath a true consent 
With planet or with element. 
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy 
In sceptred pall come sweeping by, 
Presenting Thebs, or Pelops' line, 
Or the tale of Troy divine, 100 

Or what (though rare) of later age 
Ennobled hath the buskined stage. 
But, O sad Virgin ! that thy power 
Might raise Musseus from his bower; 
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 
Such notes as, w rbled to the string, 
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, 
And made Hell grant what Love did seek; 
Or call up him that left half-told 
The story of Cambuscan bold, £/ no 

Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 
And who had Canace to wife, 
That owned the virtuous ring and glass, 
And of the wondrous horse of brass 
On which the Tartar King did ride; 
And if aught else great Bards beside 
In sage and solemn tunes have sung, 
Of turneys, and of trophies hung, 
Of forests, and inchantments drear, u 9 

Where more is meant than meets the ear.~ 
Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, 
Till civil-suited Morn appear, 



Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont 
With the Attic boy to hunt, 
But kerchieft in a comely cloud, 
While rocking winds are piping loud, 
Or ushered with a shower still, 
When the gust hath blown his fill, 
Ending on the rustling leaves, 
With minute-drops from off the eaves. 130 
And, when the sun begins to fling 
His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring ' 
To arched walks of twilight groves, 
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, 
Of pine, or monumental oak, 
Where the rude axe with heaved stroke 
Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt, 
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt. 
There, in close covert, by some brook, 
Where no profaner eye may look, 140 

Hide me from Day's garish eye, 
While the bee with honeyed thigh, 
That at her flowery work doth sing, 
And the waters murmuring, 
With such consort as they keep, 
Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep. 
And let some strange mysterious dream, 
Wave at his wings in airy stream, 
Of lively portraiture displayed, 
Softly on my eyelids laid. 150 

And as I wake, sweet music breathe 
Above, about, or underneath, 
Sent by some Spirit to mortals good, 
Or the unseen Genius of the wood. 
But let my due feet never fail 
To walk the studious cloister's pale, 
And love the high embowed roof, 
r With antick pillars massy proof, 
And storied windows richly dight, 
Casting a dim religious light. 160 

There let the pealing organ blow, 
To the full voiced Quire below, 
In service high and anthems clear, 
As may with sweetness, through mine ear, 
Dissolve me into ecstasies, 
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes. 
And may at last my weary age 
Find out the peaceful hermitage, 
The hairy gown and mossy cell, 
Where I may sit and rightly spell, . r7o 
Of every star that Heaven doth shew, 
And every hearb that sips the dew; 
Till old experience do attain 
To something like prophetic strain. 
These pleasures, Melancholy, give, 
And I with thee will choose to live. 






3° 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



SONNET TO THE NIGHTIN- 
GALE 

(1632-33) 

This piece and the following one have some- 
times been assigned to an earlier date. The 
identity of their tone with that of the Horton 
poems seems, in the absence of any definite 
evidence to the contrary, to warrant placing 
them here. 

O Nightingale that on yon bloomy spray 
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are 

still, 
Thou with fresh hopes the Lover's heart 

dost fill, 
While the jolly Hours lead on propitious 

May. 
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day, 
First heard before the shallow cuckoo's 

bill, 
Portend success in love. O if Jove's will 
Have linked that amorous power to thy 

soft lay, 
Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate 
Foretell my hopeless doom, in some grove 

nigh; 
As thou from year to year hast sung too 

late 
For my relief, yet had'st no reason why. 
Whether the Muse or Love call thee his 

mate, 
Both them I serve, and of their train am I. 



SONG ON MAY MORNING 

(1632-33) 

Now the bright morning-star, Day's har- 
binger, 
Comes dancing from the East, and leads 

with her 
The flowery May, who from her green lap 

throws 
The yellow cowslip and the pale prim- 
rose. 
Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire 
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire ! 
Woods and groves are of thy dress- 
ing; 
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. 
Thus we salute thee with our early song, 
And welcome thee, and wish thee long. 



ON TIME 

(1633-34) 

Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy 
race: 

Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours, 

Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's 
pace; 

And glut thyself with what thy womb de- 
vours, 

Which is no more than what is false and 
vain, 

And merely mortal dross; 

So little is our loss, 

So little is thy gain ! 

For, whenas each thing bad thou hast en- 
tombed, 

And, last of all, thy greedy Self consumed, 

Then long eternity shall greet our bliss 

With an individual kiss, 

And joy shall overtake us as a flood; 

When everything that is sincerely good 

And perfectly divine, 

With Truth, and Peace, and Love, shall 
ever shine 

About the supreme Throne 

Of Him, to whose happy-making sight 
alone 

When once our heavenly-guided soul shall 
climb, 

Then, all this earthly grossness quit, 

Attired with stars we shall forever sit, 

Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and 
thee, O Time ! 



AT A SOLEMN MUSIC 

(1633-34) 
Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's 

j°y> 

Sphere-born harmonious Sisters, Voice and 

Verse, 
Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power 

employ, 
Dead things with imbreathed sense able to 

pierce ; 
And to our high-raised phantasy present 
That undisturbed Song of pure consent, 
Aye sung before the sapphire - coloured 

Throne 
To Him that sits thereon, 



UPON THE CIRCUMCISION 



3i 



With saintly shout and solemn jubily; 
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row 
Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow, 
And the Cherubic host in thousand quires 
Touch their immortal harps of golden 

wires, 
With those just Spirits that wear victorious 

palms, 
Hymns devout and holy psalms 
Singing everlastingly: 

That we on Earth, with undiscording voice, 
May rightly answer that melodious noise; 
As once we did, till disproportioned Sin 
Jarred against Nature's chime, and with 

harsh din 
Broke the fair music that all creatures 

made 
To their great Lord, whose love their mo- 
tions swayed 
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood 
In first obedience, and their state of good. 
O, may we soon again renew that song, 
And keep in tune with Heaven, till God 

ere long 
To his celestial consort us unite, 
To live with Him, and sing in endless morn 

of light ! 



UPON THE CIRCUMCISION 

(1634) 

Ye flaming Powers, and winged Warriors 

bright, 
That erst with music, and triumphant song, 



First heard by happy watchful Shepherds' 

ear, 
So sweetly sung your joy the clouds along, 
Through the soft silence of the listening 

night, — 
Now mourn; and if sad share with us to 

bear 
Your fiery essence can distil no tear, 
Burn in your sighs, and borrow 
Seas wept from our deep sorrow. 
He who with all Heaven's heraldry whilere 
Entered the world, now bleeds to give us 

ease. 
Alas ! how soon our sin 
Sore doth begin 
His infancy to seize ! 
O more exceeding Love, or Law more 

just? 
Just Law indeed, but more exceeding 

Love ! 
For we, by rightful doom remediless, 
Were lost in death, till He, that dwelt 

above 
High-throned in secret bliss, for us frail 

dust 
Emptied his glory, even to nakedness; 
And that great Covenant which we still 

transgress 
Intirely satisfied, 
And the full wrath beside 
Of vengeful Justice bore for our excess, 
And seals obedience first with wounding 

smart 
This day; but oh ! ere long, 
Huge pangs and strong 
Will pierce more near his, heart. 



3 2 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



ARCADES AND COMUS 



In order to understand the task which 
Milton set himself in the Arcades and in 
Comus, it will be necessary to glance for a 
moment at the history of the dramatic form i 
which it represents. The English masque, 
though it received modifications from native 
sources, was in the main an Italian product. 
The southern love of spectacle, united with 
the Renaissance enthusiasm for classical 
learning, developed in Italy during the six- 
teenth century a peculiar species of enter- 
tainment, the nearest analogue to which in 
our own time and country is perhaps the 
annual Mardi-gras procession at New Or- 
leans. Sometimes the Italian pageants 
took this precise form of a procession of 
gorgeously decorated cars moving through 
the city streets, bearing groups of symbolic 
figures. Sometimes, on the temporary 
stage of a ducal ball-room, they took the 
form of a more coherent series of tableaux, 
a kind of masque-pageant enlivened by 
music and dumb-show. Sometimes a con- 
nected story was acted out, with elaborate 
stage devices, and choric and lyric inter- 
ludes. All these entertainments shared 
alike the qualities of spectacular gorgeous- 
ness and pseudo-classic symbolism. The 
mythology of Greece and Rome was ran- 
sacked for stories which could be suggested 
by picturesque groups of figures without 
much action ; and upon the devising and 
mounting of these groups were lavished all 
the devices of the poet, the sculptor, the 
engineer, and the costumer. Architects 
like Palladio did not disdain to design the 
stage-settings ; masters of color like Tin- 
toretto and Veronese painted the scenery ; 
mechanicians like Brunelleschi arranged 
the machinery ; distinguished musicians 



and choreographs took charge of the dances 
and songs which enriched the meagre ac- 
tion. All this of course made the masque- 
pageant an expensive form of diversion, 
open only to rich municipalities, to great 
guilds or societies, and to courts. 

It was as an adjunct to courtly merry- 
makings that the masque proper chiefly 
flourished. Just as the masque-pageant 
added to the decorative and mimetic ele- 
ments of the simple pageant the beguile- 
ment of music, instrumental and vocal, so 
the masque proper added to the masque- 
pageant an element of spoken poetry or 
recitative, and also gave to the lyric ingre- 
dient a greater importance. The services 
of poets thus came into requisition, and it 
was at court that the Italian poets were 
apt to be found. Another reason for the 
popularity of the masque at court lay in 
the opportunity which it gave for lords and 
ladies, who had been blessed with little 
histrionic genius but with abundant physi- 
cal beauty, to display themselves in deco- 
rative roles as gods and goddesses, or as 
abstract virtues and passions. 

When the masque passed over into Eng- 
land in the sixteenth century, it found 
there some indigenous forms of entertain- 
ment with which it had affinities, such as 
the pageants of the London Trade Guilds, 
the Morality plays, and the " mummings " 
which still survive, if the testimony of Mr. 
Hardy's Return of the Native is to be taken, 
in parts of rural England. How far the 
foreign importation was affected by these 
native products is uncertain, but there is 
early noticeable some substantial differ- 
ences between the English masque and its 
Italian prototype, due to the peculiar lit- 
erary conditions of England at tho time. 
Elizabethan drama was just beginning its 



ARCADES AND COMUS 



33 



wonderful career, and a crowd of play- 
wrights stood ready to seize upon any 
outlet for their talents. It was not long, 
therefore, before the somewhat crude spec- 
tacular displays which marked, for exam- 
ple, the famous visit of Queen Elizabeth 
to Kenilworth, developed in the hands of 
such dramatic poets as Dekker, Marston, 
Heywood, and Chapman into more chas- 
tened and coherent forms, with a substantial 
warp of poetry to hold the structure to- 
gether. Ben Jonson, who as laureate to 
King James was expected to furnish one 
or two masques a year for the court, lifted 
the form out of the realm of the ephemeral, 
and made it a vehicle for literature. Some- 
where in his burly make-up Ben Jonson hid 
a deposit of delicate fancy and exquisite 
song, and he fashioned the airy substance 
of his masques with love, lavishing upon 
them vast learning and invention. He 
was fortunate in having as his coadjutors 
two men of exceptional gifts, Ferrabosco, 
the King's musician, and Inigo Jones, 
the King's architect ; but Jonson refused 
stoutly to subordinate his text to the 
music of the one or to the stage devices 
of the other. Jonson's example led other 
poets to give the masque a much more con- 
scientious treatment than it had hitherto 
received. His work had only to be sup- 
plemented by the exquisite lyrical sense of 
John Fletcher, in his Faithful Shepherdess, 
and by the magic fancy of Shakespeare, in 
such masque-like creations as Midsummer 
Night's Dream and the Tempest, to prepare 
the instrument wholly for Milton's hand. 



II 



The Arcades is only a fragment, and if 
it had not been followed by Comus, would 
be of little interest except for the two or 
three lovely lyric touches which it contains. 
But as regards the circumstances of their 
production, the two poems are intimately 
connected, and any consideration of the one 



necessarily includes the other. What those 
circumstances were has already been briefly 
stated in the introductory biography. It 
is there assumed, in accordance with the 
general belief, that we owe the Arcades to 
Henry Lawes, the young musician whose 
name is otherwise imperishably bound up 
with the lyric poetry of the seventeenth 
century, since it was he who set to music 
the songs of Carew, Lovelace, Herrick, 
and other poets of his day. Biographers 
have attempted to prove, with partial 
success, that Milton was personally known 
to the Bridgewater family, and received 
the invitation to contribute to the Hare- 
field masque directly from them. The 
matter is of small importance ; certainly, 
from whatever source it came, the invita- 
tion cannot but have been welcome to the 
young poet, for several reasons. In the 
first place, the Countess Dowager of Derby, 
in whose honor the masque was performed, 
had been, in her youth, the friend of Mil- 
ton's darling poet, Spenser, who indeed 
claimed kinship with her family, the Spen- 
cers of Althorpe. To her elder sisters 
Spenser had dedicated his Muiopotmos and 
his Mother Hubberd's Tale, and to herself 
his Tears of the Muses. Such a connection 
would have been enough to throw about the 
venerable lady to Milton's eyes a halo of 
romantic interest, even had not her subse- 
quent relations with literary men made it 
possible for Warton to say that " the peer- 
age-book of this lady is the literature of 
her age." At the fine old estate of Hare- 
field, she and her second husband, Sir 
Thomas Egerton, had been visited by 
Queen Elizabeth, and the stately avenue 
of elms in which the Arcades was after- 
wards presented derived its name of the 
" Queen's Walk " from a masque of wel- 
come which was presented there on that 
occasion. A widow since 1G17, the Coun- 
tess Dowager lived in stately retirement 
at Harefield, engaged in works of charity. 
Three groups of grandchildren surrounded 



34 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



her. One of these groups contained the 
young Lady Alice Egerton, and her boy- 
brothers, Thomas Egerton and Viscount 
Brackley, who were to act the next year in 
Comus at their father's installation as Lord 
President of Wales. When the children and 
grandchildren of the aged countess proposed 
to honor her with a masque which should 
remind her of the glories surrounding her 
earlier womanhood, the project doubtless 
enlisted Milton's eager participation. 

Some less accidental considerations also 
contributed to make the task a welcome 
one. That Milton's imagination was early 
excited by the stage, and that in his college 
days he had attended the London theatres 
assiduously, is proven by an interesting 
passage in the First Elegy (see transla- 
tion, p. 324). The Puritan hatred of the 
stage had not yet touched him. That he 
had seen masques performed before he was 
called upon to write one is suggested by 
a stanza of the Ode on the Nativity, noted 
by Symonds, describing the descent of 
" meek-eyed Peace " upon the Earth: — 

" She, crowned with olive green, came softly 
sliding 

Down through the turning sphere, 
His ready harbinger, 
With turtle wing the amorous clouds divid- 
ing; 
And, waving wide her myrtle wand, 
She strikes a universal peace through sea and 
land," 

->- a description in which it is certainly dif- 
ficult not to recognize a nymph of King 
James's court, let down from the canvas 
clouds of the banqueting room at Whitehall 
by means of one of Inigo Jones's famous 
contrivances. Milton, besides, must surely 
have recognized the peculiar fitness of the 
masque form for the conveyance of moral 
and philosophic truth. The purely ideal 
realm in which the masque moves, and the 
wide latitude which it offers for the intro- 
duction of songs and speeches having only 
an ideal connection with the action in hand, 
made it a perfect instrument for the gracious 
conveyance of a serious abstract lesson. 



In the fragment of the Arcades which it 
fell to Milton's lot to compose, he was not 
free to put it to these high uses. He 
could only show, in a few exquisite touches, 
such as " branching elms star-proof," and 

" By sandy Ladon's lilied banks, 
On old Lycaeus and Cyllene hoar, 
Trip no more in twilight ranks," 

that a poet was at hand with more than 
Ben Jonson's delicacy and more than 
Fletcher's sweetness. But when in the 
spring of the next year (if we accept the 
probable date of 1633 for the Arcades) he 
was called upon once more by Lawes for 
the text of a masque, this time to celebrate 
the Earl of Bridge water's assumption of 
the Lord Presidency of Wales, at Ludlow 
Castle in Shropshire, he was left unham- 
pered to work out his conception, and to 
charge the delicate fabric of his dream 
with the weight of a personal philosophy. 

Ill 
In Comus Milton pushed much fur- 
ther than Ben Jonson had done, the su- 
premacy of the poet over the musician and 
the stage carpenter. Lawes, for purposes 
of scenic effectiveness, deftly transferred a 
portion of the lyric epilogue sung by the 
Attendant Spirit at the close, the line be- 
ginning " To the ocean now I fly," to serve 
as an entrance song for himself, changing 
" to the ocean " to " from the Heavens." 
In the masque as printed, however, there 
is no lyric element until the Sister's invo- 
cation to Echo. The bulk of the masque 
is dignified blank verse, unhurried by the > 
necessity for spectacular effect, and with 
its serious mood unrelieved by lyrical epi- 
sodes. It is as if the poet had been bent 
upon showing that he could dispense not 
only with the trumpery devices of stage 
mechanism, but also with music, whether 
his own, in the form of lyrical strophes, or 
his friend's, in the form of accompanying 
airs. Not until near the end, when the 
lesson has been enforced and the action 
is practically complete, does Milton put 



ARCADES AND COMUS 



35 



aside the sober blank verse line, and lead 
the little play to a close in rich and deli- 
cate pulsation of melody. This is so wide 
a departure from the traditions of masque- 
writing, that some critics have denied Co- 
mus the title, and declared that it is no 
more a masque than is Lyly's Endymion or 
Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Besides this metrical sobriety, the adop- 
tion of a simple human story for the cen- 
tral motive instead of a more artificial and 
fantastic theme, marks off Comus from the 
ordinary masque, and brings it nearer to 
the romantic drama of the Shakespeare 
or Fletcher type. A tradition of long 
standing asserts that this central episode 
of the sister and brothers losing their way 
in the woods was based upon an actual 
occurrence; that the Lady Alice Egerton, 
with her brothers, Mr. Thomas Egerton 
and the Viscount Brackley, did actually 
go astray in this way in Haywood forest, 
near Ludlow, while returning by night 
from a visit to some relatives in Hereford- 
shire; that the sister was in some way 
separated from her brothers; and that the 
party was rescued by a servant from the 
castle. It is more probable that this story 
is merely an outgrowth of the masque than 
that the masque was based upon it, since 
a similar motive occurs in the Old Wives' 
Tale of the early Elizabethan dramatist 
Peele, in a connection which makes it al- 
most certain that Milton had that odd play 
in his mind when composing Comus. 

But upon this simple human episode 
there is imposed a mythological element 
which is entirely in the masque spirit, 
though it is made to subserve ends of 
moral teaching rather alien from the 
ordinary masque-writer's aim. Here in 
Haywood Forest dwells Comus, a strayed 
reveller from the Pantheon of Greece. 
He is the son of Bacchus and Circe. From 
his father, the blithe god of revel, he has 
beguiling beauty and gamesomeness; from 
his mother, the enchantress, he has a strain 
of dark and eerie cruelty, a sardonic de- 



light in subjecting human souls to uncouth 
sin and fitting human bodies with features 
of grotesque bestiality. Like his mother, 
he dwells in the midst of his victims, per- 
sons whom he has changed by his spells into 
creatures half man and half beast, and 
whom he leads nightly through the forests 
in abhorrent carousal. When he feels, by 
some subtle spiritual antipathy, the pre- 
sence, of the Sister drawing near in the 
night woods, he hushes his crew, and ap- 
proaches her alone, in the guise of a simple 
peasant, whom " thrift keeps up about his 
country year." Under pretence of con- 
ducting her to a neighboring hut for shel- 
ter, he beguiles her across the threshold of 
his palace, builded faerily in the wilder- 
ness. Here he seats her on a throne in a 
room of state " set out with all manner of 
deliciousness," and casting aside his dis- 
guise, trusts to his beauty and eloquence 
to subdue her innocence to sin and bring 
her under the power of his deforming 
magic. 

Then ensues the dialogue in which the 
moral meaning of the masque is fully devel- 
oped. His Circean enchantments give the 
god power only over the body of his victim, 
not over her soul: he has but to wave his 
wand, and her senses are " all chained up 
in alabaster ;" but before he can make her 
a part of his brute fellowship, he must cor- 
rupt her heart and subdue her will to sin. 
The whole device of Comus and his band 
must be regarded, if we would penetrate 
to the moral symbolism which lies behind 
the artistic propriety of their introduction, 
as an allegory of that Platonic doctrine 
of idealism which the Elder Brother thus 
expresses : — 

"So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity 
That, when a soul is found sincerely so, 
A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, 
And in clear dream and solemn vision 
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear ; 
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants 
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, 
The unpolluted temple of the mind, 



36 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, 
Till all be made immortal. But when lust, 
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul 

talk, 
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, 
Lets in defilement to the inward parts, 
The soul grows clotted by contagion, 
Imbodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose 
The divine property of her first being." 

The uncouth crew that follows the enchan- 
ter in his nocturnal revels typify those 
human souls, which, after rendering up 
their inner purity, have gradually become 
imbodied and imbruted, and lost their di- 
vine property. But such loss and such 
transmogrification cannot be imposed from 
without; they are rather the inevitable re- 
sult of inner yielding. So long as the heart 
is sound and the will firm there is nothing 
to fear from malice, sorcery, or evil chance, 
for, — 

" Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt, 
Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled ; 
Yea, even that which Mischief meant most 

harm, 
Shall in the happy trial prove most glory. 
But evil on itself shall back recoil, 
And mix no more with goodness. If this fail, 
The pillared firmament is rottenness 
And earth's base built on stubble." 

Comus, no vulgar incarnation of sensuality, 
is subtle enough to understand this, and in 
the famous dialogue which takes place be- 
tween him and the lady he seeks to melt 
her resolution by all the devices of sophis- 
try and beguiliug suggestion. Into the 
rebuttal which she makes, as well as into 
the speeches of the Elder Brother, Milton 
has put a profound moral conviction, a con- 
viction which gave to his whole life — from 
the time when his college-mates, half in 
mockery, half in admiration, of his scrupu- 
lous purity, nicknamed him the " Lady of 
Christ's," to the time when he pictured 
Samson undone by the idolatry of sense — 
a singular crystalline glow. It is easy for 
us to underestimate the beauty and value 
of this " sage and serious doctrine of vir- 
ginity " as it is set forth in the pages of 



Comus • for to a nineteenth century moral 
sense, mellowed by a larger humanism than 
seventeenth century England knew, there 
is a suggestion of prudery, not to say prig- 
gishness, in some of the utterances. To 
be just, we must hold in mind the fact, too 
little taken account of in popular estimates 
of Milton's character, that he achieved this 
ideal only by severe struggle, and in the 
face of a nature uncommonly exposed to 
passion. 

The character of Comus may fairly be 
regarded as an authentic creation of Mil- 
ton's. Some hints, it is true, gathered here 
and there, helped him to the conception. 
In the Efrcopes, or Imagines, by Philostra- 
tus, a Greek author of the third century, 
he had seen Comus described as a winged 
god of revel and drunkenness. Ben Jon- 
son had used the personification of the 
Greek noun Kufios, from which our word 
" comedy " is derived, as a personage in 
his masque of Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, 
written in 1619. Milton had also doubt- 
less read the Latin extravaganza, entitled, 
Comus, sive Phagesiposia Cimmeria : Som- 
nium, by the Dutch writer Henrik van der 
Putten, or, as his scholar's name went, 
Erycius Puteanus. This last is a curious 
work in mixed prose and verse, recounting 
a dream in which the author beholds Co- 
mus, the revel-god, in his palace, feasting 
and making orgy with his guests ; the 
description is given a certain philosophic 
significance by the introduction of dia- 
logues on the hedonistic theory of life. Of 
these three possible sources the third was 
richest in suggestion for Milton's purposes. 
The Comus of Ben Jonson's masque is a 
sodden belly-god, who is hailed as " plump 
paunch " and, — 

" Devourer of boiled, baked, roasted, or sod ; 
An emptier of cups, be they even or odd." 

Such a deity would have had little power 
over the heroine of Milton's masque. As 
his nature was finer than Jonson's, so his 
conception of sensuousness is more subtle. 



ARCADES AND COMUS 



37 



and thrilling. To oppose the promptings 
of the lady's chaste heart, he creates a na- 
ture as poignant in its way as the mightier 
incarnation of evil in the Lucifer of Para- 
dise Lost, and as far removed as that from 
the imagery of popular moral terrorism. 

Upon the character of Comus and his 
enchanted crew Milton chiefly depended 
for that spectacular interest and that re- 
moteness from actuality which is proper 
to the masque. But he added two other 
dramatis personal deftly calculated at once 
to enrich the arabesque of spectacle, to 
increase the opportunities for lyric embel- 
lishment, and to deepen the philosophic 
symbolism of the poem. These are the 
Attendant Spirit and the river-nymph Sa- 
brina. 

Of these, the first is the more character- 
istic of Milton's mind. The idea of a guar- 
dian genius, assigned by divine benevolence 
to watch over an individual human life, 
comes out in his epigram upon Leonora Ba- 
roni, the Neapolitan singer, by whose voice 
he was fascinated during'his second visit to 
Rome (See Epigrams, translation). There 
he says, " To every man his angel is al- 
lotted, his winged angel from the ethereal 
hierarchies." This conception of a " good 
angel " is doubtless pagan in origin, but 
it has been so thoroughly assimilated by 
Christian thought as to belong now entirely 
to the region of Christian imagery. No- 
thing is more remarkable in Milton's han- 
dling of the materials of his intellectual 
world than his persistent linking of classic 
and pseudo-classic myth with what he con- 
ceived to be permanent religious truth. 
The best known examples of this are to be 
found in Lycidas, where St. Peter appears 
in the same procession with Triton and Fa- 
ther Camus (a personification of the river 
Cam at Cambridge), and in the famous 
identification in Paradise Lost of the heathen 
gods with the fallen angels. But this cu- 
rious blending of two divergent systems of 
thought and imagery appears throughout 
his work. He had, it is true, ample prece- 



dent for such a use of classical material; for 
throughout the pastoral poetry of the Re- 
naissance we can never be sure whether 
Olympus means the pagan or the Christian 
heaven, whether Pan is intended for a frol- 
icsome nature - god or for Jehovah. But 
of all the pastoralists Milton accomplishes 
this interfusion with least effort, and draws 
into the synthesis the greatest number of 
divergent associations. Thyrsis, the At- 
tendant Spirit, is manifestly akin to the 
Ariel of the Tempest, and even reminds us 
in his closing song of the Puck of Midsum- 
mer Night's Dream. Yet this very song 
is a description, under a thin classic veil, 
of the bliss of the redeemed spirits in Hea- 
ven, and an exposition of Milton's mystic 
doctrine of paradisaic Love. In the magic 
herb Hsemony, by means of which Thyrsis 
is enabled to enter the palace of the en- 
chanter and restore the captive lady, there 
is a recollection of the herb Moly, which 
saved Odysseus from the spells of Circe. 
Yet there can be little doubt that the plant 
symbolizes Christian grace; and that when 
the poet declares that the golden flower 
which it bears under better skies cannot 
come to blossom in the harsh soil where the 
shepherd found it, he is brooding over the 
corruptions of the English Church, in a 
spirit only less intense than that which 
three years later found such surprising ex- 
pression within the fantastic framework of 
Lycidas. 

Sabrina, the nymph of the river Severn, 
who is called up from her watery depths 
by the Attendant Spirit to release the lady 
from the marble spell cast over her by 
Comus, is conceived more purely in the 
masque spirit. She is perhaps a recollec- 
tion from Fletcher's pastoral play, The 
Faithful Shepherdess- certainly the lyric 
music which companions her shows the 
influence of that beautiful work. The 
entrance of the goddess and her water- 
nymphs, in her gorgeous chariot, 

11 Thickset with agate, and the azurn sheen 
Of turkis blue, and emerald green," 



3* 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



must have combined with the descent of 
the Attendant Spirit from the clouds, the 
pageantry of Comus's palace, and the dan- 
cing of the bewitched monsters, to give 
just the right touch of rococo elaborateness 
to the stage production. 

Comus, more than any other youthful 
work of Milton, and more than any work 
of his maturity except Samson Agonistes, 
shows his power as an artist. It has not 
the pure sweetness of L' Allegro and II 
Penseroso, nor does it anywhere arise to 
the lyric heights of Lycidas; but over its 
diverse and seemingly irreconcilable ele- 
ments has gone the cool hand of the mas- 
ter, to build and subdue. There is in it 
a severity of tone, a chastity of ornament, 
a calm artistic vision, to which most poets, 
even the greatest, attain only by long pur- 
ging of their eyes with euphrasy and rue. 
On the moral side, as has been said above, 
there is to many minds something not quite 



persuasive in Comus; its high doctrine 
comes at times a little priggishly and with 
a flavor of unripeness from a young man's 
lips. But its art is wholly admirable. Its 
blank verse, if it has not the thunders and 
the compelling wings of that of Paradise 
Lost, has all the later dignity of carriage. 
Its rhymed octosyllabics are in the purest 
pastoral mode. Its lyrics sing themselves, 
and shine with an unaccountable light. 
Above all, there presides over the poem 
from the first line to the last the fine econ- 
omy of a mind that compels everything 
into the service of a dominant idea. Mil- 
ton never demonstrated his character, both 
as artist and as man, more signally than 
when he made the quaint vehicle of the 
masque, designed to carry no heavier 
freightage than an evening's careless amuse- 
ment, bear the burden of a profound per- 
sonal philosophy, and bear it, not as a bur- 
den, but as an essence. 



ARCADES 

(1633) 

Part of an Entertainment presented to the Coun- 
tess Dowager of Derby at Harefield by some 
Noble Persons of her Family; who appear on 
the Scene in pastoral habit, moving toward the 
seat of state, with this song : 

I. SONG 

Look, Nymphs and Shepherds, look ! 
What sudden blaze of majesty 
Is that which we from hence descry, 
Too divine to be mistook ? 

This, this is she 
To whom our vows and wishes bend: 
Here our solemn search hath end. 
Fame, that her high worth to raise 
Seemed erst so lavish and profuse, 
We may justly now accuse 10 

Of detraction from her praise: 

Less than half we find expressed; 

Envy bid conceal the rest. 

Mark what radiant state she spreads, 
In circle round her shining throne 
Shooting her beams like silver threads: 
This, this is she alone, 



Sitting like a Goddess bright 
In the centre of her light. 

Might she the wise Latona be, 20 

Or the towered Cybele, 
Mother of a hunderd gods ? 
Juno dares not give her odds: 

Who had thought this clime had held 

A deity so unparalleled ? 

As they come forward, the Genius of the 
Wood appears, and, turning toward them, 
speaks. 

Gen. Stay, gentle Swains, for, though in 
this disguise, 
I see bright honour sparkle through your 

eyes; 
Of famous Arcady ye are, and sprung 
Of that renowned flood, so often sung, 
Divine Alpheus, who, by secret sluice, 30 
Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse; 
And ye, the breathing roses of the wood, 
Fair silver-buskined Nymphs, as great and 

good. 
I know this quest of yours and free in- 
tent 
Was all in honour and devotion meant 
To the great Mistress of yon princely 
shrine, 



ARCADES 



39 



Whom with low reverence I adore as 

mine, 
And with all helpful service will comply 
To further this night's glad solemnity, 
And lead ye where ye may more near be- 
hold 40 
What shallow-searching Fame hath left 

untold ; 
Which I full oft, amidst these shades alone, 
Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon. 
For know, by lot from Jove, I am the 

Power 
Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower, 
To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the 

grove 
With ringlets quaint and wanton windings 

wove; 
And all my plants I save from nightly ill 
Of noisome winds and blasting vapours 

chill; 
And from the boughs brush off the evil 

dew, 50 

And heal the harms of thwarting thunder 

blue, 
Or what the cross dire - looking planet 

smites, 
Or hurtful worm with cankered venom 

bites. 
When Evening grey doth rise, I fetch my 

round 
Over the mount, and all this hallowed 

ground; 
And early, ere the odorous breath of morn 
Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tasselled 

horn 
Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about, 
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout 
With puissant words and murmurs made to 

bless. 60 

But else, in deep of night, when drowsiness 
Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I 
To the celestial Sirens' harmony, 
That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres, 
And sing to those that hold the vital shears, 
And turn the adamantine spindle round 
On which the fate of gods and men is 

wound. 
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie, 
To lull the daughters of Necessity, 



And keep unsteady Nature to her law, 70 
And the low world in measured motion 

draw 
After the heavenly tune, which none can 

hear 
Of human mould with gross unpurged ear. 
And yet such music worthiest were to blaze 
The peerless height of her immortal praise 
Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit, 
If my inferior hand or voice could hit 
Inimitable sounds. Yet, as we go, 
Whate'er the skill of lesser gods can show 
I will assay, her worth to celebrate, 80 

And so attend ye toward her glittering 

state ; 
Where ye may all, that are of noble stem, 
Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture's 

hem. 

II. SONG 

O'er the smooth enamelled green, 

Where no print of step hath been, 
Follow me, as I sing 
And touch the warbled string: 

Under the shady roof 

Of branching elm star-proof 

Follow me. 90 

I will bring you where she sits, 

Clad in splendour as befits 
Her deity. 

Such a rural Queen 

All Arcadia hath not seen. 

III. SONG 

Nymphs and Shepherds, dance no more 

By sandy Ladon's lilied banks; 
On old Lycaeus, or Cyllene hoar, 

Trip no more in twilight ranks; 
Though Erymanth your loss deplore, 100 

A better soil shall give ye thanks. 
From the stony Msenalus 
Bring your flocks, and live with us; 
Here ye shall have greater grace, 
To serve the Lady of this place. 
Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were, 
Yet Syrinx well might wait on her. 

Such a rural Queen 

All Arcadia hath not seen. 



* 



4 o 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 

: '- 



-• 









<- 



COMUS 






DEDICATION OF THE ANONYMOUS EDITION PUBLISHED BY LAWES IN 1637 

" To the Right Honourable John, Lord Viscount Brackley, son and heir-apparent to the Earl of 

Bridgewater, $-c." 

" My Lord, — This Poem, which received its first occasion of birth from yourself and others 
of your noble family, and much honour from your own person in the performance, now returns 
again to make a final dedication of itself to you. Although not openly acknowledged by the 
Author, yet it is a legitimate offspring, so lovely and so much desired that the often copying of 
it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction, and brought me to a necessity of pro- 
ducing it to the public view, and now to offer it up, in all rightful devotion, to those fair hopes 
and rare endowments of your much-promising youth, which give a full assurance to all that know 
you of a future excellence. Live, sweet Lord, to be the honour of your name ; and receive this 
as your own from the hands of him who hath by many favours been long obliged to your most 
honoured Parents, and, as in this representation your attendant Thyrsis, so now in all real ex- 
pression 

" Your faithful and most humble(Servant, 

"H. Lawes." 

THE PERSONS 



The Attendant Spirit, afterwards in the habit of Thyrsis. 

Comus, with his Crew. 

The Lady. 

FniST Brother. 

Second Brother. 

Sabrina, the Nymph. 

The Chief Persons which presented were : — 

The Lord Brackley ; 

Mr. Thomas Egerton, his Brother ; 

The Lady Alice Egerton. 



dU 



The first Scene discovers a wild wood. 
The Attendant Spirit descends or enters. 

Before the starry threshold of Jove's 

court 
My mansion is, where those immortal 



Of bright aerial Spirits live insphered 
In regions mild of calm and serene air, 
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot 
Which men call Earth, and, with low- 

thoughted care, 
Confined and pestered in this pinfold here, 
Strive to' keep up a frail and feverish being, 
Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives, 
After this mortal change, to her true ser- 
vants 10 
Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted 

seats. 
Yet some there be that by due steps aspire 
To lay their just hands on that golden key 
That opes the Palace of Eternity. 
To such my errand is; and, but for such, 



I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds 
With the rank vapours of this sin-worn 
mould. 
But to my task. Neptune, besides the 
sway 
Of every salt flood and each ebbing stream, 
Took in, by lot 'twixt high and nether Jove, 
Imperial rule of all the sea-girt Isles 21 
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay 
The unadorned bosom of the Deep: 
Which he, to grace his tributary gods, 
By course commits to several government, 
And gives them leave to wear their sap- 
phire crowns 
And wield their little tridents. But this 

Isle, 
The greatest and the best of all the main, 
He quarters to his blue-haired deities; 29 
And all this tract that fronts the falling sun 
A noble Peer of mickle trust and power 
Has in his charge, with tempered awe to 

guide 
An old and haughty Nation, proud in arms : 






b t< 



COMUS 



4' 



Where his fair offspring, nursed in princely 

lore, 
Are coming to attend their father's state, 
And new-intrusted sceptre. But their way 
Lies through the perplexed paths of this 

drear wood, 
The nodding horror of whose shady brows 
Threats the forlorn and wandering passen- 
ger; 
And here their tender age might suffer 

peril, 40 

But that, by quick command from sovran 

Jove, 
I was despatched for their defence and 

guard ! 
And listen why; for I will tell you now 
What never yet was heard in tale or song, 
From old or modern bard, in hall or bower. 
Bacchus, that first from out the purple 

grape 
Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine, 
After the Tuscan mariners transformed, 
Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds 

listed, 
On Circe's island fell. (Who knows not 

Circe, 50 

The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed 

cup 
Whoever tasted lost his upright shape, 
And downward fell into a grovelling 

swine ?) 
This Nymph, that gazed upon his cluster- 
ing locks, 
With ivy berries wreathed, and his blithe 

youth, 
Had by him, ere he parted thence, a Son 
Much like his father, but his mother more, 
Whom therefore she brought up, and 

Comus named: 
Who, ripe and frolic of his full-grown age, 
Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields, 60 
At last betakes him to this ominous wood, 
And, in thick shelter of black shades im- 

bowered, 
Excels his mother at her mighty art; 
Offering to every weary traveller 
His orient liquor in a cr^yjA^l.gl^Si. | 
To quench the drouth of Phcebus'jj which 

as they taste 
(For most do taste through fond intemper- 
ate thirst), 
Soon as the potion works, their human 

count'nfnce, 
The exp?ess' / ~Tse'semblance of the gods, is 

changed 



Intoysome, Jt?rutish form of wolf or bear, 70 
Or omice or tiger, hog, or bearded goat, 
All other parts remaining as they were. 
And they, so perfect is their misery, 
Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, 
But boast themselves more comely than 

before, 
And all their friends and native home for- 
get, 
To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty. 
Therefore, when any favoured of high Jove 
Chances to pass through this adventrous 

glade, 
Swift as the sparkle^of a glancing star 80 
I shoot from heaven, to give him safe con- 
voy, 
As now I do. But first I must put off 
These my sky-robes, spun out of Iris' woof, 
And take the weeds and likeness of a 

swain 
That to the service of this house belongs, 
Who, with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied 

song, 
Well knows to still the wild winds when 

they roar, 
And hush the waving woods; nor of less 

faith, 
And in this office of his mountain watch 
Likeliest, and nearest to the present aid 90 
Of this occasion. But I hear the tread 
Of hateful steps; I must be viewless now. 

Comus enters, with a charming-rod in one hand, 
his glass in the other ; with him a rout of Mon- 
sters^iwaded like sundry sorts of wild beasts, 
but otherwise like men and women, their apparel 
ist&ring. They come in making a riotous 
and 



I unruly noise, with torches in their hands. 

Comus. v The star that bids the shepherd 
fold 
Now the top of heaven doth hold; 
And the gilded car of Day 
His glowing axle doth allay 
In the steep Atlantic stream: ( 
Antflhe slope Sun his upward beam 
jSTioots against the dusky pole, 
Tracing toward the other goal 10c 

Of his chamber in the east. 
Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast, 
Midnight shout and revelry, 
Tipsy dance and jollity. 
Braid your locks with rosy twine, 
Dropping odours, dropping wine. 
Rigour now is gone to bed; 
And Advice with scrupulous head, 



42 



POEMS .WRITTEN AT HORTON 



1 



Strict Age, and sour Severity, 

With their grave saws, in slumber lie. no 

We, that are of purer fire, « 

Imitate the starry Quire, 

Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, 

Lead in swift round the months and 

years. 
The sounds and seas, with all their finny 

drove, 
Now to the Moon in wavering morrice 

move; 
And on the tawny sands and shelves 
Trip the pert Fairies and the dapper Elves. 
By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, 
The Wood-Nymphs, decked with daisies 

trim, 120 

Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: 
What hath night to do with sleep ? 
Night hath better sweets to prove; 
Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. 
Come, let us our rites begin ; 
'T is nly daylight that makes sin, 
Which these dun shades will ne'er report. 
Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport, 
Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret 

flame 
Of midnight torches burns ! mysterious 

Dame, 130 

That ne'er art called but when the dragon 

womb 
Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest 

gloom, 
And makes one blot of all the air ! 
Stay thy cloudy ebon chair, . • '.-' •■> '*- 
Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and be- 
friend 
Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end 
Of all thy dues be done, and none left out 
Ere the blabbing eastern scout, 
The nice Morn on the Indian steep, 
From her cabined loop-hole peep, 140 

And to the tell-tale Sun descry 
Our concealed solemnity. 
Come, knit hands, and beat the ground 
In a light fantastic round. 

The Measure. ^ • 

Break off, break off ! I feel the different 

pace 
Of some chaste footing near about this 

ground. 
Run to your shrouds within these brakes 

and trees; 
Our number may affright. Some virgin 



(For so I can distinguish by mine art) 
Benighted in these woods ! Now to my 

charms, 150 

And to my wily trains: I shall ere long 
Be well stocked with as fair a herd as 

grazed 
About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl 
My dazzling spells into the spongy air, . ■',*.* 
Of power to cheat the eye with blear illu- 
sion, 
And give it false presentments, lest the 

place 
And my quaint habits breed astonishment, 
And put the Damsel to suspicious flight; 
Which must not be, for that 's against my 

course. ( ' 

I, under fair pretence of f riendlvj \tf0& : "160 
And well-placed words of glozing" courtesy, 
Baited with reasons not unplausible, 
Wind me into the easy-hearted man, 
And hug him into snares. When once her 

eye 
Hath met the virtue of this magic dust 
I shall appear some harmless villager, 
Whom thrift keeps up about his country 

gear. 
But here she comes; I fairly step aside, 
And hearken, if I may her business hear. 

The Lady enters. 

Lady. This way the noise was, if mine 

ear be true, 170 

My best guide now. Methought it was the 

sound 

Of riot and ill-managed merriment, 
Such as the jocond flute or gamesome pipe 
Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,^ 
When, for their teeming flocks and granges 

full, 
In wanton dance they praise the bounteous 

Pan, 
And thank the gods amiss. I should be' ^ 

loth 
To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence '■, 
Of such late wassailers ; yet, oh ! where 

else 
Shall I inform my unacquainted feet 180 
In the blind mazes of this tangled wood ? 
My brothers, when they saw me wearied 

out 
With this long way, resolving here to lodge 
Under the spreading favour of these pines, 
Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket- 
side 
To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit 



) 



v^ 



COMUS 



43 



vAs the kind hospitable woods provide. — i 

They left me then when the grey-hooded 
Even, 

Like a sad Votarist in palmer's weed, 

^,ose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus* 
wain. 190 

But where they are, and why they came 
not back, 

Is now the labour of my thoughts. 'T is 
likeliest 

They had ingaged their wandering steps 
too far; 

And envious darkness, ere they could re- 
turn, 

Had stole them from me. Else, O thiev- - 
ish Night, 

Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious 
end, 

In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars 

That Nature hung in heaven, and filled 
their lamps 

With everlasting oil, to give due light / 

To the misled and lonely travailler c \_y 200 

This is the place, as well as I may guess, 

Whence even now the tumult of loud 
mirth 

Was rife, and perfet in my listening ear; 

Yet nought but single darkness do I find. 

What might this be ? A thousand fanta- 
sies 
, Begin to throng into my memory, 

Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows 
dire, 

And airy tongues that syllable men's 
names 

On sands and shores and desert wilder- 
nesses. 

These thoughts may startle well, but not 
astound 210 

( i The virtuous mind, that ever walks at- 
tended 

By a strong siding champion, Conscience. 

welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed 

Hope, 
Thou hovering angel girt with golden 

wings, 
And thou unblemished form of Chastity ! 

1 see ye visibly, and now believe 

That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all 

things ill 
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, 
Would send a glistering guardian, if need 

were, 
To keep my life and honour unassailed. . . . 
Was I deceived, or did, a sable cloud 221 



Turn forth her silver lining on the night ? 
I did not err: there does a sable cloud 
Turn forth her silver lining on the night, 
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove. 
I cannot hallo to my brothers, but 
Such noise as I can make to be heard 

farthest 
•I '11 venter; for my new-enlivened spirits 
Prompt me, and they perhaps are not far 

off. 

SONG 

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st 
unseen 230 

Within thy airy shell 
By slow Meander's margent green, 
And in the violet-imbroidered vale 

Where the love-lorn Nightingale 
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth 

well : 
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair 
That likest thy Narcissus are ? 

O if thou have 
Hid them in some flowery cave, 

Tell me but where, 240 

Sweet Queen of Parley, Daughter of the 

Sphere ! 
So may'st thou be translated to the skies, 
And give resounding grace to all Heaven's 
harmonies ! 

Comus. Can any mortal mixture of 
earth's mould 
Breathe such divine inchanting ravishment ? 
Sure something holy lodges in that breast, 
And with these raptures moves the vocal air 
To testify his hidden residence. 
How sweetly did they float upon the wings 
Of silence, through the empty-vaulted 
night, 250 

At every fall smoothing the raven down 
Of darkness till it smiled ! I have oft heard 
My mother Circe with the Sirens three, 
Amidst the flowery-kirtled Nalactes^ 
Culling their potent hearbs and baleful 

drugs, 
Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned 

soul, 
And lap it in Elysium : Scvlla wept, 
And chid her barking waves into attention, 
And fell Charybdis murmured soft ap- 
plause. * 
Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the 
sense, 260 



44 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



And in sweet madness robbed it of itself; 
But such a sacred and home-felt delight, 
Such sober certainty of waking bliss, 
I never heard till now. I '11 speak to her, 
And she shall be my Queen. — Hail, for- 
eign wonder ! 
Whom certain these rough shades did 

never breed, 
Unless the Goddess that in rural shrine 
Dwell'st here with Pan or Sylvan, by blest 

song 
Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog 
To touch the prosperous growth of this tall 
wood. 270 

Lady. Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost 
that praise 
That is addressed to unattending ears. 
Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift 
How to regain my severed company, 
Compelled me to awake the courteous 

Echo 
To give me answer from her mossy couch. 
Comus. What chance, good Lady, hath 

bereft you thus ? 
Lady. Dim darkness and this leavy 

labyrinth. 
Comus. Could that divide you from near- 
ushering guides ? 
Lady. They left me weary on a grassy 
turf. 280 

Comus. By falsehood, or discourtesy, or 

why ? 
Lady. To seek i' the valley some cool 

friendly spring. 
Comus. And left your fair side all un- 
guarded, Lady ? 
Lady. They were but twain, and pur- 
posed quick return. 
Comus. Perhaps forestalling night pre- 
vented them. 
Lady. How easy my misfortune is to 

hit! 
Comus. Imports their loss, beside the 

present need ? 
Lady. No less than if I should my bro- 
thers lose. 
Comus. Were they of manly prime, or 

youthful bloom ? 
Lady. As smooth as Hebe's their un- 
razored lips. 290 
Comus. Two such I saw, what time the 
laboured ox 
In his loose traces from the furrow came, 
And the swinked hedger at his supper sat. 
I saw them under a green mantling vine, 



That crawls along the side of yon small hill, 
Plucking ripe clusters from the tender 

shoots ; 
Their port was more than human, as they 

stood. 
I took it for a faery vision 
Of some gay creatures of the element, 
That in the colours of the rainbow live, 300 
And play i' the plighted clouds. I was 

awe-strook, 
And, as I passed, I worshiped. If those 

you seek, 
It were a journey like the path to Heaven 
To help you find them. 

Lady. Gentle villager, 

What readiest way would bring me to that 

place ? 
Comus. Due west it rises from this 

shrubby point. 
Lady. To find out that, good Shepherd, 

I suppose, 
In such a scant allowance of star-light, 
Would overtask the best land-pilot's art, 
Without the sure guess of well-practised 

feet. 310 

Comus. I know each lane, and every 

alley green, j /A- 
Dingle, or^u^hyjlellwof this w^ld wood, 
And everyT)oskj boOT^m^m" side to side, 
My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood ; 
And, if your stray attendance be yet lodged, 
Or shroud within these limits, I shall know 
Ere morrow wake, or the low-roosted lark 
From her thatched pallet rouse. If other- 
wise, 
I can conduct you, Lady, to a low 319 

But loyal cottage, where you may be safe 
Till further quest. 

Lady. Shepherd, I take thy word, 

And trust thy honest-offered courtesy, 
Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds, 
With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls 
And courts of princes, where it first was 

named, 
And yet is most pretended. In a place 
Less warranted than this, or less secure, 
I cannot be, that I should fear to change it. 
Eye me, blest Providence, and square my 

trial 
To my proportioned strength ! Shepherd, 

lead on. . . . 330 

The Two Brothers. 

Eld. Bro. Unmuffle, ye faint stars; and 
thou, fair Moon, 



COMUS 



45 



That wont'st to love the travailler's beni- 

son, 
Stoop thy pale visage through an amber 

cloud, 
And disinherit Chaos, that reigns here 
In double night of darkness and of shades; 
Or, if your influence be quite dammed up 
With black usurping mists, some gentle 

taper, 
Though a rush-candle from the wicker hole 
Of some clay habitation, visit us 
With thy long levelled rule of streaming 
light, 34° 

And thou shalt be our star of Arcady, 
Or Tyrian Cynosure. 

Sec. Bro. Or, if our eyes 

Be barred that happiness, might we but 

hear 
The folded flocks, penned in their wattled 

cotes, 
Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, 
Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock 
Count the night-watches to his feathery 

dames, 
'T would be some solace yet, some little 

cheering, 
In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs. 
But, Oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister ! 
Where may she wander now, whither be- 
take her 351 
From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and 

thistles ? 
Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now, 
Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad 

elm 
Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with 

sad fears. 
What if in wild amazement and affright, 
Or, while we speak, within the direful 

grasp 
Of savage hunger, or of savage heat ! 
Eld. Bro. Peace, brother: be not over- 
exquisite 
To cast the fashion of uncertain evils; 360 
For, grant they be so, while they rest un- 
known, 
What need a man forestall his date of grief, 
And run to meet what he would most 

avoid ? 
Or, if they be but false alarms of fear, 
How bitter is such self-delusion ! 
I do not think my sister so to seek, 
Or so unprincipled in virtue's book, 
And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms 



As that the single want of light and noise 
(Not being in danger, as I trust she is not) 
Could stir the constant mood of her calm 

thoughts, 371 

And put them into misbecoming plight. 
Virtue could see to do what Virtue would 
By her own radiant light, though sun and 

moon - 

Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's 

self 
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, 
Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation, 
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her 

wings, 
That, in the various bustle of resort, 
Were all to-ruffled, and sometimes im- 
paired. 380 
He that has light within his own clear 

breast 
V May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day: 
But he that hides a dark soul and foul 

thoughts 
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; 
Himself is his own dungeon. 

Sec. Bro. 'T is most true 

That musing Meditation most affects 
The pensive secrecy of desert cell, 
Far from the cheerful haunt of men and 

herds, 
And sits as safe as in a senate-house; 
For who would rob a Hermit of his weeds, 
His few books, or his beads, or maple 

dish, 391 

Or do his grey hairs any violence ? 
But Beauty, like the fair Hesperian Tree 
Laden with blooming gold, had need the 

guard 
Of dragon-watch with uninchanted eye 
To save her blossoms, and defend her fruit, 
From the rash hand of bold Incontinence. 
You may as well spread out the unsunned 

heaps 
Of miser's treasure by an outlaw's den, 
And tell me it is safe, as bid me hope 400 
Danger will wink on Opportunity, 
And let a single helpless maiden pass 
Uninjured in this wild surrounding waste. 
Of night or loneliness it recks me not; 
I fear the dread events that dog them both, 
Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the 

person 
Of our unowned sister. 

Eld. Bro. I do not, brother, 

Infer as if I thought my sister's state 
Secure without all doubt or controversy; 



ev^^^ 



^vv* jjza 



4 6 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



Yet, where an equal poise of hope and 
fear 410 

Does arbitrate the event, my nature is 
That I encline to hope rather than fear, 
And gladly banish squint suspicion. 
My sister is not so defenceless left 
As you imagine; she has a hidden strength, 
Which you remember not. 

Sec. Bro. What hidden strength, 

Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean 

that? 

Eld. Bro. I mean that too, but yet a 

hidden strength, 

Which, if Heaven gave it, may be termed 

her own : 
'T is Chastity, my brother, Chastity: 420 
She that has that is clad in com'plete steel, 
And, like a quivered nymph with arrows 

keen, 
May trace huge forests, and unharboured 

heaths, 
Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds; 
Where, through the sacred rays of chas- 
tity, 
No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaineer, 
Will dare to soil her virgin purity. 
Yea, there where very desolation dwells, 
By grots and caverns shagged with horrid 
shades, 429 

She may pass on with unblenched majesty, 
Be it not done in pride, or in presumption. 
Some say no evil thing that walks by night, 
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish feu, 
Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost, 
That breaks his magic chains at curfew 

time, 
No goblin or swart faery of the mine, 
Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity. 
Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call 
Antiquity from the old schools of Greece 
To testify the arms of Chastity ? 440 

Hence had the huntress Dian her dread 

bow, 
Fair silver-shafted Queen for ever chaste, 
Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness 
And spotted mountain - pard, but set at 

nought 
The frivolous bolt of Cupid; gods and men 
Feared her stern frown, and she was queen 

o' the woods. 
What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield 
That wise Minerva wore, unconquered vir- 
gin. 
Wherewith she freezed her foes to con'- 
gealed stone, 



But rigid looks of chaste austerity, 450 

And noble grace that dashed brute violence 
With sudden adoration and blank awe ? 
So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity 
That, when a soul is found sincerely so, 
A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, 
And in clear dream and solemn vision 
Tell her of things that no gross ear can 

hear; 
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants 
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, 
The unpolluted temple of the mind, 461 

And turns it by degrees to the soul's es- 
sence, 
Till all be made immortal. But, when 

lust, 
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul 

talk, 
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, 
Lets in defilement to the inward parts, 
The soul grows clotted by contagion, 
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose 
The divine property of her first being. 
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows 
damp 470 

Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres, 
Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave, 
As loth to leave the body that it loved, 
And linked itself by carnal sensualty 
To a degenerate and degraded state. 

Sec. Bro. How charming is divine Philo- 
sophy ! 
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools sup- 
pose, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute, 
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, 
Where no crude surfeit reigns. 

Eld. Bro. List ! list ! I hear 

Some far-off hallo break the silent air. 481 

Sec. Bro. Methought so too; what should 

it be? 
Eld. Bro. For certain, 
Either some one, like us, night-foundered 

here, 
Or else some neighbour woodman, or, at 

worst, 
Some roving robber calling to his fellows. 
Sec. Bro. Heaven keep my sister ! 
Again, again, and near ! 
Best draw, and stand upon our guard. 

Eld. Bro. I '11 hallo. 

If he be friendly, he comes well: if not, 
Defence is a good cause, and Heaven be 
for us ! 



COMUS 



47 



The Attendant Spirit, habited like a shepherd. 

That hallo I should know. What are you ? 
speak. 490 

Come not too near; you fall on iron stakes 
else. 
Spir. What voice is that ? my young 

Lord ? speak again. 
Sec. Bro. O brother, 'tis my father's 

Shepherd, sure. 
Eld. Bro. Thyrsis ! whose artful strains 
have oft delayed 

The huddling brook to hear his madrigal, 

And sweetened every musk -rose of the 
dale. 

How earnest thou here, good swain ? Hath 
any ram 

Slipped from the fold, or young kid lost his 
dam, 

Or straggling wether the pent flock for- 
sook? 

How couldst thou find this dark seques- 
tered nook ? 500 
Spir. O my loved master's heir, and his 
next joy, 

I came not here on such a trivial toy 

As a strayed ewe, or to pursue the stealth 

Of pilfering wolf; not all the fleecy wealth 

That doth enrich these downs is worth a 
thought 

To this my errand, and the care it brought. 

But, oh ! my virgin Lady, where is she ? 

How chance she is not in your company ? 
Eld. Bro. To tell thee sadly, Shepherd, 
without blame 

Or our neglect, we lost her as we came. 510 
Spir. Ay me unhappy ! then my fears 

are true. 
Eld. Bro. What fears, good Thyrsis ? 

Prithee briefly shew. 
Spir. I '11 tell ye. 'T is not vain or fab- 
ulous 

(Though so esteemed by shallow ignorance) 

What the sage poets, taught by the hea- 
venly Muse, 

Storied of old in high immortal verse 

Of dire Chimeras and inchanted Isles, 

And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to 
Hell; 

For such there be, but unbelief is blind. 
Within the navel of this hideous wood, 52c 

Immured in cypress shades, a Sorcerer 
dwells, 

Of Bacchus and of Circe born, great Comus, 

Deep skilled in all his mother's witcheries, 



And here to every thirsty wanderer 
By sly enticement gives his baneful cup, 
With many murmurs mixed, whose pleas- 
ing poison 
The visage quite transforms of him that 

drinks, 
And the inglorious likeness of a beast 
Fixes instead, unmoulding reason's mintage 
Charactered in the face. This have I 
learnt 530 

Tending my flocks hard by i' the hilly 

crofts 
That brow this bottom glade ; whence night 

by night 
He and his monstrous rout are heard to 

howl 
Like stabled wolves, or tigers at their prey, 
Doing abhorred rites to Hecate 
In their obscured haunts of inmost bowers. 
Yet have they many baits and guileful 

spells 
To inveigle and invite the unwary sense 
Of them that pass unweeting by the way. 
This evening late, by then the chewing 
flocks 540 

Had ta'en their supper on the savoury herb 
Of knot-grass dew-besprent, and were in 

fold, 
I sat me down to watch upon a bank 
With ivy canopied, and interwove 
With flaunting honeysuckle, and began, 
Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy, 
To meditate my rural minstrelsy, 
Till fancy had her fill. But ere a close 
The wonted roar was up amidst the woods, 
And filled the air with barbarous disso- 
nance; 550 
At which I ceased, and listened them a 

while, 
Till an unusual stop of sudden silence 
Gave respite to the drowsy-flighted steeds 
That draw the litter of close - curtained 

Sleep. 
At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound 
Rose like a steam of rich distilled per- 
fumes, 
And stole upon the air, that even Silence 
Was took ere she was ware, and wished 

she might 
Deny her nature, and be never more, 
Still to be so displaced. I was all ear, 560 
And took in strains that might create a soul 
Under the ribs of Death. But, oh ! ere 

long 
Too well I did perceive it was the voice 



4 8 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



Of my most honoured Lady, your dear sis- 
ter. 

Amazed I stood, harrowed with grief and 
fear; 

And " O poor hapless Nightingale," thought 

" How sweet thou sing'st, how near the 
deadly snare ! " 

Then down the lawns I ran with headlong 
haste, 

Through paths and turnings often trod by 
day, 

Till, guided by mine ear, I found the 
place 570 

Where that damned wisard, hid in sly dis- 
guise 

(For so by certain signs I knew), had met 

Already, ere my best speed could prevent, 

The aidless innocent lady, his wished prey; 

Who gently asked if he had seen such two, 

Supposing him some neighbour villager. 

Longer I durst not stay, but soon I guessed 

Ye were the two she meant; with that I 
sprung 578 

Into swift flight, till I had found you here ; 

But furder know I not. 

Sec. Bro. O night and shades, 

How are ye joined with hell in triple knot 

Against the unarmed weakness of one vir- 
gin* 

Alone and helpless ! Is this the confidence 

You gave me, brother ? 

Eld. Bro. Yes, and keep it still ; 

Lean on it safely ; not a period 

Shall be unsaid for me. Against the threats 

Of malice or of sorcery, or that power 

Which erring men call Chance, this I hold 
firm: 

Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt, 

Surprised by unjust force, but not en- 
thralled; 590 

Yea, even that which Mischief meant most 
harm 

f Shall in the happy trial prove most glory. 
But evil on itself shall back recoil, 
And mix no more with goodness, when at 

last, 
Gathered like scum, and settled to itself, 
It shall be in eternal restless change 
Self-fed and self-consumed^/ If this fail, 
The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
And earth's base built on stubble. But 

come, let 's on ! 
Against the opposing will and arm of 
Heaven 600 



May never this just sword be lifted up; 
But, for that damned magician, let him be 

girt 
With all the griesly legions that troop 
Under the sooty flag of Acheron, 
Harpies and Hydras, or all the monstrous 

forms 
'Twixt Africa and Ind, I '11 find him out, 
And force him to restore his purchase back, 
Or drag him by the curls to a foul death, 
Cursed as his life. 

Spir. Alas ! good ventrous youth, 

I love thy courage yet, and bold em- 
prise; 610 
But here thy sword can do thee little stead. 
Far other arms and other weapons must 
Be those that quell the might of hellish 

charms. 
He with his bare wand can unthread thy 

joints, 
And crumble all thy sinews. 

Eld. Bro. Why, prithee, Shepherd, 

How durst thou then thyself approach so 

near 
As to make this relation ? 

Spir. Care and utmost shifts 

How to secure the Lady from surprisal 
Brought to my mind a certain shepherd 
lad, 619 

Of small regard to see to, yet well skilled 
In every virtuous plant and healing hearb 
That spreads her verdant leaf to the morn- 
ing ray. 
He loved me well, and oft would beg me 

sing; % . 

Which when I did, he on the tender grass 
Would sit, and hearken even '■to s "Vec , stasy, 
And in requital ope his leathern scrip, 
And shew me* simples of a thousand names, 
Telling their strange and vigorous facul- 
ties. 
Amongst the rest a small unsightly root, 
But of divine effect, he culled me out. 630 
The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on 

it, 
But in another country, as he said, 
Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this 

soil: 
Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull 

swain 
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon;/i 
And yet more med'cinal is it than that 

Moly 
That Hermes once to wise Ulysses 
He called it Haemony, and gave 



es gave, 
it me, 



COMUS 



49 



And bade me keep it as of sovran use 
'Gainst all inchantments, mildew blast, or 

damp, 640 

Or ghastly Furies' apparition. 
I pursed it up, but little reckoning made, 
Till now that this extremity compelled. 
But now I find it true ; for by this means 
I knew the foul inchanter, though disguised, 
Entered the very lime-twigs of his spells, 
And yet came off. If you have this about 

you 
(As I will give you when we go) you may 
Boldly assault the necromancer's hall; 
Where if he be, with dauntless hardi- 
hood 650 
And brandished blade rush on him: break 

his glass, 
And shed the luscious liquor on the ground; 
But seize his wand. Though he and his 

curst crew 
Fierce sign of battail make, and menace 

high, 
Or, like the sons of Vulcan, vomit smoke, 
Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink. 
Eld. Bro. Thyrsis, lead on apace; I '11 

follow thee; 
And some good angel bear a shield before 



TJie Scene changes to a stately palace, set out 
with all manner of deliciousness : soft music, 
tables spread with all dainties. Comus ap- 
pears with his rabble, and the Lady set in 
an inchanted chair ; to whom he offers his glass ; 
which she puts by, and goes about to rise. 

Comus. Nay, Lady, sit. If I but wave 
this wand, 

Your nerves are all chained up in alablas- 
ter, 660 

And you a statue, or as Daphne was, . 

Root-bound, that fled Apollo. 

Lady. Fool, do not boast. 

Thou canst not touch the freedom of my 
mind 

With all thy charms, although this corpo- 
ral rind 

Thou hast immanaclefl while Heaven sees 
good. 
Comus. Why are you vexed, Lady ? 
why do you frown ? 

Here dwell no frowns, nor anger; from 
these gates 

Sorrow flies far. See, here be all the plea- 
sures 

That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts, 



When the fresh blood grows lively, and re- 
turns 670 
Brisk as the April buds in primrose sea- 
son. 
And first behold this cordial julep here, 
That flames and dances in his crystal 

bounds, 
With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups 

mixed. 
Not that Nepenthes which the wife of 

Thone 
In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena 
Is of such power to stir up joy as this, 
To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst. 
Why should you be so cruel to yourself, 
And to those dainty limbs, which Nature 
lent 680 

For gentle usage and soft delicacy ? 
But you invert the covenants of her trust, 
And harshly deal, like an ill borrower, 
With that which you received on other 

terms, 
Scorning the unexempt condition 
By which all mortal frailty must subsist, 
Refreshment after toil, ease after pain, 
That have been tired all day without re- 
past, 
And timely rest have wanted. But, fair 
virgin, 689 

This will restore all soon. 

Lady. 'T will not, false traitor ! 

'T will not restore the truth and honesty 
That thou hast banished from thy tongue 

with lies. 
Was this the cottage and the safe abode 
Thou told'sf^me of ? What grim aspects' 

are tj^seA 
These oughly-hel^led monsters ? Mercy 

guard me ! 
Hence with thy brewed inchantments, foul 

deceiver ! 
Hast thou betrayed my credulous inno- 
cence 
With vizored falsehood and base forgery ? 
And wouldst thou seek again to trap me 

here 
With lickerish baits, fit to ensnare a brute ? 
Were it a draught for Juno when she ban- 
quets, 70 1 
I would not taste thy treasonous offer. 

None 
But such as are good men can give good 

things; 
And that which is not good is not delicious 
To a well-governed and wise appetite. 



5° 



POEMS WRIT 



TEN 












AT HORTON 



Comus. O foolishness of men ! that lend 
their ears 

To those budge doctors of the Stoic fur, 

And fetch their precepts from the Cynic 
tub, 

Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence ! 

Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties 
forth 710 

With such a full and unwithdrawing hand, 

Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and 
flocks, 

Thronging the seas with spawn innumer- 
able, 

But all to please and sate the curious 
taste ? 

And set to work millions of spinning worms, 

That in their green shops weave the smooth- 
haired silk, 

To deck her sons; and, that no corner 
might 

Be vacant of her plenty, in her own loins 

She hutched the all-worshiped ore and pre- 
cious gems, 

To store her children with. If all the 
world 720 

Should, in a pet of temperance, feed on 
pulse, ?. 

Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear 
but frieze, 

The All-giver would be unthanked, would 
be unpraised, 

Not half his riches known, and yet de- 
spised ; 

And we should serve him as a grudging 
master, 

As a penurious niggard of his wealth, 

And live like Nature's bastards, not her 
sons, 

Who would be quite surcharged with her 
own weight, 

And strangled with her waste fertility: 

The earth cumbered, and the winged air 
darked with plumes ; 730 

The herds would over-multitude their lords; 

The sea o'erfraught would swell, and the 
unsought diamonds 

Would so emblaze the forehead of the 
Deep, 

And so bestud with stars, that they below 

Would grow inured to light, and come at 
last 

To gaze upon the Sun with shameless 
brows. 

List, Lady; be not coy, and be not cozened 

With that same vaunted name, Virginity. 



Beauty is Nature's coin; must not be 

hoarded, 
But must be current; and the good thereof 
Consists in mutual and partaken bliss, 741 
Unsavoury in the injoyment of itself. 
If you let slip time, like a neglected rose 
It withers on the stalk with languished 

head. 
Beauty is Nature's brag, and must be shown 
In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, 
Where most may wonder at the workman- 
ship. 
It is for homely features to keep home; 
They had their name thence: coarse com- 
plexions 
And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to 
ply 750 

The sampler, and to tease the huswife's 

wool. 
What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that, 
Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the 

Morn ? 
There was another meaning in these gifts; 
Think what, and be advised; you are but 
young yet. 
Lady. I had not thought to have un- 
locked my lips 
In this unhallowed air, but that this Jug- 
gler 
Would think to charm my judgment, as 

mine eyes, 
Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's 

garb. 
I hate when Vice can bolt her arguments 
And Virtue has no tongue to check her 
pride. 761 

Impostor ! do not charge most innocent 

Nature, 
As if she would her children should be riot- 
ous 
With her abundance. She, good Cateress, 
Means her provision only to the good, 
That live according to her sober laws, 
And holy dictate of spare Temperance. 
If every just man that now pines with 

want 
Had but a moderate and beseeming share 
Of that which lewdly-pampered Luxury 
Now heaps upon some few with vast ex- 
cess, 771 
Nature's full blessings would be well-dis- 
pensed 
In unsuperfluous even proportion, 
And she no whit encumbered with her 
store : 



COMUS 



5 1 



And then the Giver would be better 

thanked, 
His praise due paid : for swinish Gluttony 
Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his gorgeous 

feast, 
But with besotted base ingratitude 
Crams, and blasphemes his Feeder. Shall 

I go on ? 
Or have I said enow ? To him that dares 
Arm his profane tongue with contemptu- 
ous words 781 
Against the sun-clad power of Chastity 
Fain would I something say; — yet to what 

end? 
Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, to apprehend 
The sublime notion and high mystery 
That must be uttered to unfold the sage 
And serious doctrine of Virginity; 
And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not 

know 
More happiness than this thy present lot. 
Enjoy your dear Wit, and gay Rhetoric, 
That hath so well been taught her dazzling 
fence; 79 i 

Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced. 
Yet, should I try, the uncontrolled worth 
Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt 

spirits 
To such a flame of sacred vehemence 
That dumb things would be moved to sym- 
pathize, 
And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, 

and shake, 
Till all thy magic structures, reared so 

high, 
Were shattered into heaps o'er thy false 
head. 
Comus. She fables not. I feel that I do 
fear 800 

Her words set off by some superior power; 
And, though not mortal, yet a cold shud- 
dering dew 
Dips me all o'er, as when the wrath of Jove 
Speaks thunder and the chains of Erebus 
To some of Saturn's crew. I must dissem- 
ble, 
And try her yet more strongly. — Come, 

no more ! 
This is mere moral babble, and direct 
Against the canon laws of our foundation. 
I must not suffer this ; yet 't is but the 

lees 
And settlings of a melancholy blood. 810 
But this will cure all straight; one sip of 
this 



Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight 
Beyond the bliss of dreams. Be wise, and 
taste . . . 

The Brothers rush in with swords drawn, 
wrest his glass out of his hand, and break it 
against the ground : his rout make sign of re- 
sistance, but are all driven in. The Attend- 
ant Spirit comes in. 

Spir. What ! have you let the false En- 
chanter scape ? 

O ye mistook; ye should have snatched his 
wand, 

And bound him fast. Without his rod re- 
versed, 

And backward mutters of dissevering 
power, 

We cannot free the Lady that sits here 

In stony fetters fixed and motionless. 

Yet stay: be not disturbed; now I bethink 
me, 820 

Some other means I have which may be 
used, 

Which once of Melibceus old I learnt, 

The soothest Shepherd that ere piped on 
plains. 
There is a gentle Nymph not far from 
hence, 

That with moist curb sways the smooth 
Severn stream: 

Sabrina is her name: a virgin pure; 

Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine, 

That had the sceptre from his father Brute. 

She, guiltless damsel, flying the mad pur- 
suit 

Of her enraged stepdame, Guendolen, 830 

Commended her fair innocence to the flood 

That stayed her flight with his cross-flow- 
ing course. 

The water-Nymphs, that in the bottom 
played, 

Held up their pearled wrists, and took her 
in, 

Bearing her straight to aged Nereus' hall; 

Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank 
head, 

And gave her to his daughters to imbathe 

In nectared lavers strewed with asphodil, 

And through the porch and inlet of each 
sense 839 

Dropt in ambrosial oils, till she revived, 

And underwent a quick immortal change, 

Made Goddess of the river. Still she re- 
tains 

Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve 



52 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



Visits the herds along the twilight mea- 
dows, 
Helping all urchin blasts, and ill-luck signs 
That the shrewd meddling Elf delights to 

make, 
Which she with pretious vialed liquors 

heals : 
For which the Shepherds, at their festivals, 
Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, 
And throw sweet garland wreaths into her 
stream, 850 

Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffadils. 
And, as the old Swain said, she can un- 
lock 
The clasping charm, and thaw the numb- 
ing spell, 
If she be right invoked in warbled song; 
For maidenhood she loves, and will be 

swift 
To aid a virgin, such as was herself, 
In hard-besetting need. This will I try, 
And add the power of some adjuring verse. 

SONG 

Sabrina fair, 

Listen where thou art sitting 860 

Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, 

In twisted braids of lilies knitting 
The loose train of thy amber-dropping 
hair; 
Listen for dear honour's sake, 
Goddess of the silver lake, 
Listen and save ! 

Listen, and appear to us, ,.,,{, 

In name of great Oceanus, 

By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace, 

And Tethys' grave majestic pace; 870 

By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look, 

And the Carpathian wizard's hook; 

By scaly Triton's winding shell, 

And old soothsaying Glaucus' spell; 

By Leucothea's lovely hands, 

And her son that rules the strands; 

By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet, 

And the songs of Sirens sweet; 

By dead Parthenope's dear tomb, 

And fair Ligea's golden comb, 880 

Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks 

Sleeking her soft alluring locks ; 

By all the nymphs that nightly dance 

Upon thy streams with wily glance; 

Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head 

From thy coral-paven bed, 



And bridle in thy headlong wave, 
Till thou our summons answered have. 

Listen and save ! 

Sabrina rises, attended by Water-nymphs, and 
sings. 

By the rushy-fringed bank, 890 

Where grows the willow and the osier 
dank, 

My sliding chariot stays, 
Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen 
Of turkis blue, and emerald green, 

That in the channel strays: 
Whilst from off the waters fleet 
Thus I set my printless feet 
O'er the cowslip's velvet head, 

That bends not as I tread. 
Gentle swain, at thy request 900 

I am here ! 

Spir. Goddess dear, 
We implore thy powerful hand 
To undo the charmed band 
Of true virgin here distressed 
Through the force and through the wile 
Of unblessed enchanter vile. 

Sabr. Shepherd, 't is my office best 
To help insnared Chastity. 
Brightest Lady, look on me. 910 

Thus I sprinkle on thy breast 
Drops that from my fountain pure 
I have kept of pretious cure; 
Thrice upon thy finger's tip, 
Thrice upon thy rubied lip: 
Next this marble venomed seat, 
Smeared with gums of glutinous heat, 
I touch with chaste palms moist and cold. 
Now the spell hath lost his hold; 
And I must haste ere morning hour 920 
To wait in Amphitrite's bower. 

Sabrina descends, and the Lady rises out of 
her seat. 
Spir. Virgin, daughter of Locrine, 
Sprung of old Anchises' line, 
May thy brimmed waves for this 
Their full tribute never miss 
From a thousand petty rills, 
That tumble down the snowy hills : 
Summer drouth or singed air 
Never scorch thy tresses fair, 
Nor wet October's torrent flood 930 

Thy molten crystal fill with mud; 
May thy billows roll ashore 
The beryl and the golden ore; 



COMUS 



53 



May thy lofty head be crowned 
With many a tower and terrace round, 
And here and there thy banks upon 
With groves of myrrh and cinnamon. 
Come, Lady; while Heaven lends us 
grace, 
Let us fly this cursed place, 
Lest the Sorcerer us entice 940 

With some other new device. 
Not a waste or needless sound 
Till we come to holier ground. 
I shall be your faithful guide 
Through this gloomy covert wide; 
And not many furlongs thence 
Is your Father's residence, 
Where this night are met in state 
Many a friend to gratulate 
His wished presence, and beside 950 

All the Swains that there abide 
With jigs and rural dance resort. 
We shall catch them at their sport, 
And our sudden coming there 
Will double all their mirth and cheer. 
Come, let us haste; the stars grow high, 
But Night sits monarch yet in the mid 

sky- 

The Scene changes, presenting Ludlow Town, and 
the President's Castle : then come in Country 
Dancers ; after them the Attendant Spirit, 
with the two Brothers and the Lady. 

SONG 

Spir. Back, Shepherds, back ! Enough 
your play 
Till next sun-shine holiday. 
Here be, without duck or nod, 960 

Other trippings to be trod 
Of lighter toes, and such court guise 
As Mercury did first devise 
With the mincing Dryad es 
On the lawns and on the leas. 

This second Song presents them to their Father 
and Mother. 

Noble Lord and Lady bright, 
I have brought ye new delight. 
Here behold so goodly grown 
Three fair branches of your own. 
Heaven hath timely tried their youth, 970 
t Their faith, their patience, and their truth, 
And sent them here through hard assays 
With a crown of deathless praise, 



To triumph in victorious dance 

O'er sensual Folly and Intemperance. 

The dances ended, the Spirit epiloguizes. 

Spir. To the ocean now I fly, 
And those happy climes that lie 
Where day never shuts his eye, 
Up in the broad fields of the sky. 
There I suck the liquid air, 980 

All amidst the Gardens fair 
Of Hesperus, and his daughters three 
That sing about the Golden Tree. 
Along the crisped shades and bowers 
Revels the spruce and jocond Spring; 
The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours 
Thither all their bounties bring. 
There eternal Summer dwells, 
And west winds with musky wing 
About the cedarn alleys fling 99 o 

Nard and cassia's balmy smells. 
Iris there with humid bow 
Waters the odorous banks, that blow 
Flowers of more mingled hue 
Than her purfled scarf can shew, 
And drenches with Elysian dew 
(List mortals, if your ears be true) 
Beds of hyacinth and roses, 
Where young Adonis oft reposes, 
Waxing well of his deep wound 1000 

In slumber soft, and on the ground 
Sadly sits the Assyrian queen; 
But far above in spangled sheen 
Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced, 
Holds his dear Psyche sweet intranced, 
After her wandring labours long, 
Till free consent the gods among 
Make her his eternal Bride, 
And from her fair unspotted side 
Two blissful twins are to be born, 10 10 

Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn. 

But now my task is smoothly done, 
I can fly, or I can run 
Quickly to the green earth's end, 
Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend, 
And from thence can soar as soon 
To the corners of the Moon. 

Mortals, that would follow me, 
Love Virtue, she alone is free; 
She can teach ye how to climb 1020 

Higher than the spheary chime: 
Or, if Virtue feeble were, 
Heaven itself would stoop to her. 



54 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



LYCIDAS 



Lycidas is an elegy, and as such offers 
no peculiar difficulties of interpretation for 
a modern reader ; but it is also a pastoral 
elegy, and belongs therefore to a type of 
literature which has fallen so completely 
into disuse that an act of the historic 
imagination is required to place us in the 
proper attitude toward it. Unless we un- 
derstand something of the theory under- 
lying the pastoral poems of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries, and something 
of the mental conditions lying behind that 
theory, we can with difficulty do justice to 
a poem like Lycidas, which moves in a 
world of deliberate artifice, where the re- 
strictions and the liberties are alike fan- 
tastic. Dr. Johnson's amusingly jejune 
animadversions upon Lycidas represent in 
its extremest form the danger of judg- 
ing such a poem by standards of mere 
" common-sense." The letter of such criti- 
cism as his is often true, but the spirit is 
grotesquely false, because it leaves out of 
account both the general differences which 
mark off poetry from prose, and, still more 
flagrantly, the particular mould into which 
the pastoral poets deliberately chose to cast 
their thoughts. 

The rise and progress of pastoral poetry 
on the Continent and in England forms one 
of the most curious chapters in the history 
of literature. From Portugal, where it 
took its rise in the fourteenth century, 
it spread rapidly through the whole of 
civilized Europe, and persisted in various 
forms until late in the eighteenth century. 
It enlisted the pens of the greatest writers, 
— Cervantes in Spain, Tasso and Boccaccio 
in Italy, Spenser, Fletcher, and Milton in 
England. It invaded the drama; it found 
its way into politics, and into religion. In 
France it produced at least one great 



painter, Watteau, and built up a system of 
manners and sentiments which not even the 
subtle laughter of Moliere could overthrow. 
The mock village where Marie Antoinette 
and the ladies of her court played at being 
shepherdesses and milkmaids still stands 
in the park of the Petit Trianon at Ver- 
sailles; and the royal toy, with its pathetic 
associations, reminds us how persistent was 
the enthusiasm for the pastoral idea, and 
in what curious ramifications the enthusi- 
asm worked itself out. No movement of 
mind ever takes place on such a scale as 
this unless it springs from deep causes; the 
art products which accompany it, however 
artificial and perverse they may seem on 
the surface, minister to real spiritual needs 
of the age wherein they appear. 

The source of the pastoral poetry and 
romance of the Renaissance is to be found, 
naturally, in the country idylls of the Sici- 
lian poets, Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, 
and in the Georgics of Virgil. Even the 
earliest and simplest of the Sicilian idylls 
have a note of artificiality, in that they are 
studies of country life from the outside, by 
minds more or less artistically sophisti- 
cated. Virgil, essentially an urban poet, 
though with a keen sensibility to the idyllic 
aspects of country life, took still more plainly 
this outside point of view, — a view exactly 
opposite (to choose a modern instance) from 
that which Wordsworth constantly tried to 
assume. This primary bent away from 
realism received, when the pastoral forms 
of poetry began to be received in southern 
Europe, a great reinforcement from the 
nature of the Renaissance itself. The life 
of the Renaissance was an urban life; be- 
yond the circumvallations of defense within 
which the great revival ran its course still 
lay the shadow of medievalism. Any real 
sympathy with the life of the woods and 
fields on the part of a man of the town was 



LYCIDAS 



55 



impossible. Still, just there beyond the 
walls the country lay, and for the seeing 
eye of the artist could not but have an 
irresistible appeal. Being chiefly external 
and visual, this appeal naturally came first 
to the painters and worked itself out in 
those conventionalized but still lovely back- 
grounds of hill and river which the early 
artists put behind their madonnas. The 
poets were not slow to take the hint, and to 
provide a country setting for their fancies. 
But they came to nature with their minds 
full of classical images. They saw nature 
only across a vague mist of literary recol- 
lection. They peopled their landscapes 
with nymphs and goddesses, satyrs and 
fauns, because the poets they revered had 
done so. The whole topography, fauna, 
and flora of the country where the poet 
lived suffered a change into something re- 
membered from Latin or Greek poetry. 

In the midst of this fantastic landscape, 
with its mythological accessories, they set, 
not real country - folk, of whose charac- 
ters and modes of mind an understanding 
was denied to them, but men and women 
of their acquaintance, disguised in bucolic 
costume, and following, in the intervals of 
love-making and song-piping, the mildest 
of bucolic pursuits. The result of all this 
was a type of literature perhaps more com- 
pletely separated from fact than any other 
that has ever existed under the sun. This 
unreality, however, so far from lessening 
the hold of pastoral literature on men's 
minds, proved to be the chief element of 
its charm. Men welcomed with eagerness 
this odd, remote world of the pastoral, 
where existence smoothed itself out into 
languid summer sweetness, where time and 
its tragedies were a tale told in the shade, 
and where no fact intervened to break with 
harsh angle the soft sky line of fancy. 
The pastoral ministered to the longing for 
evasion, for an escape from the tyranny 
of the actual, which is a constant element 
in the human imagination. It was at the 
same time a facile genre to cultivate. It 



appealed to the finest talents by reason 
of its ideality, as strongly as it attracted 
mediocre wits by the easy successes which 
it offered. 

When the pastoral went over into Eng- 
land, in the wake of the Italianizing school 
headed by Spenser and Sidney, two changes 
took place in it. It gained in spontaneity 
of nature-feeling, chiefly in the hands of 
Spenser and William Browne, and it gained 
in moral earnestness, especially in the work 
of George Wither and Phineas Fletcher. 
The pastoral form came to Milton's hands, 
therefore, with all its original quaint re- 
moteness and fantastic ideality unimpaired, 
but with a new freshness of feeling added 
to it, and the proved possibility that its 
pretty fictions could be used to convey a 
serious message. 



II 



In the late summer of 1637 news came 
to Milton of the drowning of Edward King 
off the Welsh coast; and after the open- 
ing of the fall term at Cambridge, he was 
asked to contribute to a memorial volume 
of verse to be dedicated to King's memory. 
When he began to cast about for a form 
in which to put his thought, several con- 
siderations urged him toward the pastoral 
elegy. Because < . its classical origin and 
4 prototypes, that form had a traditional 
academic flavor appropriate to the circum- 
stances. The pastoral fiction had moreover 
been used by two generations of English 
poets as a vehicle for affectionate communi- 
cation with each other in verse ; and King, 
though not a gifted singer, had at least jus- 
tified his shepherdship by frequent verse- 
making. These, however, were minor con- 
siderations. Of much more moment in 
determining Milton's choice must have been 
his perception of the double fact that his 
real interest in King and his fate was a 
symbolic rather than a personal one, and 
that the pastoral was of all forms of poetry 
the most amenable to symbolic treatment. 



56 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



Much misprision of Lycidas, from Dr. 
Johnson down, has resulted from a failure 
to accept the first of these premises. We 
do not, it is true, know exactly what the 
personal relations of young King and his 
future elegist were, during their common 
term of residence within the walls of 
Christ's College. King was Milton's junior, 
however, and so far as we can judge from 
his preserved writings, not of a type of 
mind to attract an isolated and haughty 
personality. Milton was not a man to con- 
tract those easy miscellaneous friendships 
open to a less exigent nature, nor was he 
a man to let a genuine friendship, once 
contracted, go unchronicled, as his letters 
and poems to Charles Diodati testify. 

But no such a priori argument to prove 
the case is needed. Lycidas itself bears 
convincing testimony that it grew not out 
of a poignant personal grief, such as in- 
spired three years later the elegy upon 
Diodati, but out of a passion no less intense 
for being more generalized and imagina- 
tive. King was, everything goes to show, 
one of those men upon whom there rests 
in youth an indefinable light of promise, 
the same in kind if not in degree as two 
centuries later touched the imaginations of 
another group of young Cantabrigians gath- 
ered about Arthur Hallam. His death 
could stand, therefore, before the eye of 
the poet, as a type of touching unfulfill- 
ment. No one who has studied the psy- 
chology of the poetic mind will doubt the 
kindling power of such an abstraction. 
But if this pathos of mortality had not 
been enough (and for a spirit of Milton's 
martial cast it might not have been) King's 
death had another symbolic significance. 
He had been in preparation for the minis- 
try; he was a type of the " good shepherd " 
who should enter the sheep-folds of the 
church and save the flock from hirelings 
and thieves. Already in Comus Milton 
had given a hint of his growing indigna- 
tion over the corruptions of the church, 
and during the three years of silence which 



followed the writing of that poem he had 
been brooding angrily upon the laxity and 
worldliness of the Episcopal establishment. 
Here was his chance to speak out. He 
seized upon the symbol without much re- 
gard to King's actual worth or power, 
broadening and dignifying the individual 
instance to fit the might of his denuncia- 
tion. 

The symbolic bearing of his theme, as 
has been said, naturally pointed Milton to 
the pastoral form, which by its ideal re- 
moteness lent itself with peculiar readi- 
ness to symbolism. It will not do, how- 
ever, to press this point too far, since the 
fact must be borne in mind that for the 
expression of what was unquestionably 
deep personal grief, he chose, in the Epi- 
taphium Damonis, the same general form. 
But between the Epitaphium Damonis and 
Lycidas there is this notable difference : 
the first is in the pure style of the early 
Sicilian pastoralists, and belongs, therefore, 
to a simple personal type of elegy ; Lycidas 
is in the mixed rococo style of the pasto- 
ralists of the late Renaissance, and belongs 
to a type which had long been put to ulte- 
rior uses and overlaid with deposit upon 
deposit of literary second-thought. We 
can see, indeed, in this last particular, an 
additional reason why the form should have 
recommended itself to Milton, as well as 
one prime source of the wonderful beauty 
which gathered about the theme under his 
hand. For his mind was of the kind which 
delights to draw together into one sub- 
stance the thought-material of all climes 
and times. Into this magic vessel of the 
Renaissance pastoral he gathered the my- 
thologies of Greece and Rome, the mongrel 
divinities of the academic myth-makers, 
dim old druidical traditions, the miracles 
of Palestine, the symbolism of the Catholic 
church, the angelic hierarchies of mediaeval 
theologians, and the mystical ecstasies of 
the redeemed in Paradise, — all set in a 
frame-work of English landscape, in the 
midst of which a Sicilian shepherd sat 



LYCIDAS 



57 



piping strains of a double meaning. Surely 
there was never a more strangely com- 
pounded thing than Lycidas. Surely there 
was never a more astonishing instance of 
the wizardry of the imagination than this, 
where at a compelling word a hundred 
motley and warring suggestions are swept 
together and held suspended in airy unity. 



Ill 



The structure of Lycidas is unique in 
English verse ; loose analogues are to be 
found in the lyric choruses in Guarini's 
famous play of Pastor Fido, to which Mil- 
ton undoubtedly gave careful study. The 
form stands midway between that of the 
strict ode, with set stanzas, lines of fixed 
length, and rhymes of fixed recurrence, 
such as we find in Shelley's Adona'is, and 
the complete lawlessness of the so-called 
Pindaric ode invented by Cowley and fa- 
miliarized to us by Dryden's Ode on St. 
Cecilia's Day. Though printed without 
stanza breaks, Lycidas groups itself into 
eleven distinct sections of varying length, 
happily termed by Professor Masson " free 
musical paragraphs." These are composed 
of iambic five-foot lines, occasionally varied 
by the introduction of a line of three feet, 
which is subtly contrived to relieve the 
rhythmic monotony by imparting a kind of 
swirl or eddy to the onward flow of the 
verse. The rhyme system is very free. 
Sometimes the lines rhyme in couplets, 
sometimes alternately; again, as in the 
eight lines at the close, they interlace 
themselves in the Italian form known as 
terza rima. The boldest and most success- 
ful device which Milton used, however, 
was the prolongation of a single rhyme- 
sound through a whole passage, in rich 
replications and echoes. An example of 
this occurs in the opening passage of the 
poem. Another daring innovation is illus- 
trated by the first line of all, which stands 
detached, with no rhyme-word to answer 
it. A number of these isolated lines occur 



throughout the elegy: to a sensitive ear 
they heighten the poignancy of the music 
by introducing an element of momentary 
dissonance or unfulfillment, which is at 
once lost in the wealth of concord, with an 
effect somewhat like that of a suspension 
and resolution in instrumental music. 



IV 



Through the succession of these " free 
musical paragraphs " the thought and im- 
agery unfold themselves, — capriciously, 
even incoherently, it would seem to the 
hasty glance. Let us try to trace this un- 
folding scheme, and to perceive the intel- 
lectual framework upon which the poet 
has woven his music. Such analysis is 
more than ordinarily needful in the study 
of Lycidas, because its unity is compounded 
of so many simples, and the thought moves 
from group to group of imagery through 
such subtly modulated transitions. 

The poem opens without any warning of 
its pastoral character, or of the fact that the 
author is concealing his personality under 
the figure of a shepherd plaining for his 
lost companion : — 

" Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, 
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, 
I come to pluck your berries harsh and 
crude" . . . 

Just beneath the surface of the passage 
there is a plain autobiographic intention. 
For three years (since the manuscript of 
Comus had been sent to Lawes) Milton had 
written no poetry, and here he declares 
that only " bitter constraint" and "sad oc- 
casion dear " compel him to break silence 
now. From other sources we know the 
reason of his silence, namely, that he was 
" mewing his mighty youth," and strength- 
ening himself for a flight beside which his 
previous efforts would dwindle into insig- 
nificance. The myrtle boughs with which 
he hoped one day to bind his brow were 
still harsh and crude, unmellowed by the 
long year of his preparation. But sorrow 



58 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



for his friend is a theme too cogent to be 
resisted, and the Muses mast come, in spite 
of their denials. 

Then, to make tangible the sources of 
that sorrow, follows a picture of the life 
which the two friends had led together. 
Under the beautiful pastoral imagery, Mil- 
ton conveys a veiled description of their 
college pursuits. It is not wise to push 
the dual meaning very far. If we are too 
eager to translate the Satyrs and cloven- 
heeled Fauns who dance to the oaten pipes 
of Lycidas and his companion, into Cam- 
bridge undergraduates applauding Milton's 
and King's Latin exercises, and old Da- 
mcetus into the tutor Chappell or Sir 
Henry Wotton, we shall spoil the poetry 
beyond repair; but, on the other hand, we 
shall quite fail to appreciate the spirit of 
the pastoral unless we manage to see be- 
hind the veil of imagery a quaint proces- 
sion of fact. 

A stanza of lament over the " heavy 
change " which the death of Lycidas and 
the ceasing of his song has brought upon 
the countryside, leads naturally into a 
querulous questioning of the Muses which 
should have protected him, as to their 
whereabouts at the moment of his danger : 
"Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorse- 
less deep 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 
For neither were ye playing on the steep 
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie, 
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, 
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard 
stream." 

The artistic intention behind this is to bring 
before the mind, indirectly and tentatively, 
the tragic circumstances and romantic sur- 
roundings of Lycidas's death. At the same 
time it subserves a further purpose. It 
enriches the classical theme by suggestion 
drawn from a dim barbarian cycle of po- 
etry and myth, and it prepares the reader 
for the more magnificent and shadowy ap- 
parition, further on, of the " fable of Bel- 
lerus old," and the great vision of St. 
Michael keeping guard upon his mount. 



One idea in this passage is sufficiently curi- 
ous in itself and sufficiently significant of 
Milton's habit of mind, for us to linger 
over, even at the risk of losing the thread 
of the analysis. Milton calls the Druid 
priests bards of the classic Muses, not in 
the general sense, because they practised 
poetry, but with reference to a legend 
which he afterward elaborated in his Latin 
poem to Manso. There, defending Eng- 
land against the imputation of poetic bar- 
renness, he says : " We, too, worship Apollo; 
of old we sent him gifts to his island, borne 
by a chosen band of Druids. Often, in 
memory of this pilgrimage, the Greek girls 
circle the altars in grassy Delos, and in 
glad songs commemorate Loxo, and pro- 
phetic Upis, and Hecaerge of the yellow 
hair, — Druid maids, whose nude breasts 
were stained with Caledonian woad." This 
idea of a physical connection between the 
legendary singers and seers of Britain and 
the gods of Greek song and prophecy, had 
a peculiar fascination for a mind like Mil- 
ton's, which constantly craved to bring the 
diverse elements of the world's thought 
into unison. In its position here, the allu- 
sion aids greatly in making plausible the 
picture of Greek divinities disporting them- 
selves upon the shores of the Irish sea. 

Across the mood of complaint strikes 
suddenly the desolating thought of the im- 
potence of the Muses to help their vota- 
ries : — 

" Ah me, I fondly dream 
' Had ye been there ' . . . for what could that 
have done ? " 

Behind the gracious divinities of song looms 
a darker figure, omnipotent to destroy. 
Wistfully for a moment the poet turns to 
watch the gay hedonists of his generation, 
and to question whether it were not better 
done to distil the earthly happiness of love 
than to watch and agonize for the guerdon 
of the " clear spirit," since the blind Fury 
waits to " slit the thinspun life " at the 
very instant of its fulfilment. The ignoble 
despondency lasts only for a moment, and 



LYCIDAS 



59 



then is nobly transcended. Phoebus, con- 
ceived of suddenly in his mystical and uni- 
versal character, touches the poet's ears, 
the seat of memory, with a gesture of sa- 
cred significance : — 

" ' But not the praise,' 
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling 
ears." . . . 

It is difficult to render clear to one's con- 
sciousness what it is which makes this 
transition so thrilling. Perhaps the phrase 
" trembling ears " suggests a kind of ex- 
quisite sensitiveness to the presence of the 
god, such as an animal would feel at an 
invisible human presence, which makes 
more intense the words of mystical com- 
fort, as the mind is led upward to that 
place where the poet's fame lives and 
spreads aloft by the pure eyes of the ever- 
lasting Judge. 

The theme has now been lifted too high 
above the pastoral key, and is brought 
back by an invocation of Arethusa, the 
fountain of Theocritus, and Mincius, Vir- 
gil's river. Then there passes across the 
scene a weird procession, — Triton, come 
from Neptune to hold a court of question 
concerning the death of Lycidas; iEolus, 
defender of the Winds against the imputed 
crime; Father Camus, a personification of 
the college river, bewailing the loss of his 
child; and last, the figure of St. Peter, 
bearing the mitre of spiritual sovereignty 
and the keys of power to bind and loose. 
Then, by a curious blur, the conception of 
the dead man as a shepherd under Apollo 
merges into the conception of him as a 
shepherd of the flocks of Christ. In the 
perfect ease of the transition there is more 
than a hint of Milton's exalted theory of 
the poet's function. For him, the poet and 
the preacher are one voice. The shallow 
ornateness of a hireling's sermon and the 
scrannel pipings of a rhymester are alike 
profanations of the temple. Here, without 
a word of warning, he transfers the whole 
apparatus of classical imagery from its re- 
ceived meaning as symbolic of the poetic 



life, and applies it to the life of Christian 
ministry. At the same time the expression 
takes on a biblical fervor of denunciation 
and the metaphor becomes hurried and tur- 
bid. The wonderful anathema of " blind 
mouths," and the confusion of image which 
makes the preaching of a corrupt ministry 
at once a flashy song and a rank mist, pre- 
pares the mind for the apocalyptic vague- 
ness of the " two-handed engine at the 
door," which may mean anything from the 
two-edged sword of Revelations to the two 
houses of the English Parliament. 

The next transition is abrupt but exqui- 
site. The theme has again, as it were in 
the poet's despite, risen above the pastoral 
tone into a region of fiery thought, from 
which the river-gods and the mild Muses of 
pastoral poetry shrink in fear. So, as the 
visionary shape of St. Peter departs mut- 
tering vague menaces, the poet calls, — 

" Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past 
That shrunk thy streams ; return, Sicilian 

Muse, 
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast 
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand 

hues," . . . 

and the roll-call of the flowers which fol- 
lows, with its delicate characterization and 
sweet fancy, brings back gradually the 
pastoral atmosphere. But to the poet him- 
self it is only a device " to interpose a little 
ease," — to cheat into momentary quiet his 
imagination, which keeps tending passion- 
ately outward toward the tragic and per- 
turbed suggestions of his theme. The sud- 
den breaking away from these pretty floral 
fancies to follow the drowned body beyond 
the stormy Hebrides and through the mon- 
strous world of the ocean depths, is the 
finest enharmonic change in the poem; and 
the nine lines which close in shadowy diapa- 
son with " the fable of Bellerus old," and 
the " great Vision of the guarded mount," 
are among the miracles of imaginative 
utterance. 

Throughout the elegy we have noticed a 
constant struggle of the thought to break 



60 POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 



through the pastoral conventions. It is 
largely this struggle on the one hand and 
repression on the other, which gives the 
poem its remarkable intensity. At the 
close the poet abandons himself entirely 
to his impulse, and the theme soars softly 
into a region of mystical light, where all 
that is most gracious in the Hellenic con- 
ception of Elysium and all that is most 
touching in the Hebraic dream of Heaven, 
meet in lovely unison, after which the 
lines, 

" Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore 
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good 
To all that wander in that perilous flood 



LYCIDAS 






lead the mind down again by a matchless 
gradation to the picture of the solitary 
shepherd piping in the evening fields; and 
the poem comes to a close on the quiet pas- 
toral levels where it began. 

Of the language of Lycidas perhaps the 
less said the better, for no analysis can hope 
to capture its secret. In its union of the soft 
and the thrilling, of the exquisite and the 
august, of music and might, it has not been 
surpassed, even by Milton himself. Indeed, 
the oftener one reads Lycidas, the more 
inclined one is apt to be to accept Mark 
Pattison's dictum, that here Milton touched 
the high-water mark of his poetry. 












(1637) 



In this Monody the Author bewails a learned 
Friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage 
from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637 ; and, by 
occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted 
Clergy, then in their height. 



ft 



Yet 



O ye Laurels, and once 



once more 

more, 
Ye Myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, 
I come to pluck your berries harsh and 

crude, 
And with forced fingers rude 
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing 

year. 
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear 
Compels me to disturb your season due; 
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, 
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his 

peer. 
Who would not sing for Lycidas ? he 

knew 10 

Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. 
He must not float upon his watery bier 
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind 
Without the meed of some melodious tear 

Begin, then, Sisters of the' s&cred well 
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth 

spring; P Hjf^XfA^ 
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the 

string. 
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse: 
So may some gentle Muse 



With lucky words favour my destined urn, 

And as he passes turn, 21 

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud ! 

For we were nursed upon the self-same 

hill, 
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and 

rill; 
Together both, ere the high lawns ap- 

-r peared 
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn, 
We drove a-field, and both together heard 
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry 

Battening our flot*ks with the fresh dews of 

night, 
Oft till the star that rose at evening 

bright 
Toward heaven's descent had sloped his 

westering wheel. 31 

Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute ; 
;en flute 



Tempered to thd patei 
Rough jSat^r^Me§, & 



Fainis 



with 



cloven heel 
From the glad sound would not be absent 



long; 



r J5u 
. ( Now 



And old Bamcetas loved to hear our song. 
But, oh ! tEe heavy change, now thou ■'■ • 

art gone, 
thou art gone and never must re- , 

turn ! 
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert 

caves, 
With wild thyme and the gadding vine 

o'ergrown, 40 

And all their echoes, mourn. 
The willows, and the hazel copses green, 






%L^ri --Ui^i - 



LYCIDAS 



61 



, Shall now no more be seen 
/Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft 
lays. 
As killing as the canker to the rose, 
/^ Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that 
graze, 
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe 

5 *r-*V wear ' 

//When first the white-thorn blows; 

| Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear. 
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the re- 
morseless deep 5° 
1 Closed o'er the head of your loved Lyci- 
das ? 

For neither were ye playing on the steep 

Where your old Bards, the famous Druids, 
lie, 

Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, 

Nor yet where Deva sprellffs her wisard 
stream. 

Ay me ! I fondly dream 

" Had ye been there," . . . for what could 
that have done ? Sc^A^ 

What could the Muse herself that Orpheus 
bore, 

The Muse herself, for her inchanting son, 

Whom universal nature did lament, 60 

When, by the rout that made the hideous 
roar, 

His gory visage down the stream was 
sent, 

Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian 
shore ? 
Alas ! what boots it with uncessant care 

To tend the homely, slighted, Shepherd's 
trade 



And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ? Hjp mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge 



Were it not better done^ ,a£ 

To sport with Amaryllis in 

Or with the tangles of Nesera' s nan- : 

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth- 

raise 70 

(That last infirmity of noble mind) 
To scorn delights and live laborious days; 
But the fair guerdon when we hope to 

find, 
And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred 

shears, \ 5} oJW 
And slits the thin-spun life. " But not the 

praise," 
Phcebus replied, and touched my trembling 

ears: 
" Fame is no plant that grows on mortal 

soil, 



Nor in the glistering foil 

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour 

lies, 80 

But lives and spreads aloft by those pure 

eyes 
And perfet witness of all-judging Jove; 
As he pronounces lastly on each deed, 
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy 

meed." \ Ivv^ <v I MXiL 

O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured 

flood, ruv^A* /W. *AJ^*l 

Smooth-sliding MinchVs, crowned with vocal 

reeds, 
That strain I heard was of a higher mood. 
But now my oat proceeds, 
And listens to the Herald of the Sea, 
That came in Neptune's plea. go 

"Me asked the waves, and asked the felon 

winds, 
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle 
t swain ? 

vknd questioned every gust of rugged wings 
That blows from off each beaked promon- 
tory. 
They knew not of his story; 
And sage Hippotades their answer brings, 
That not a~"Mas£"was from his dungeon 

strayed : 
The air was calm, and on the level brine 
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played. 
It was that fatal and perfidious bark, 100 
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses 

dark, 
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. 
Next, Camus, reverend Sire," went footing 
slow, 






others use, . $m wrou ght with figur 

rlrtMrfCTrr **%. I Like to that sanguine : 



es dim, and on the 



sanguine flower inscribed with 



woe. 



" Ah ! who hath reft," quoth he, " my dear- 
est pledge ? " 

Last came, and last did go, 

The Pilot of the Galilean Lake ; * 109 

Two massy keys he bore of metals twain 

(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). 

He shook his mitred locks, and stern be- 
spake : — 

" How well could I have spared for thee, 
young swain, 

Anow of such as, for their bellies' sake, 

Creep, and intrude, and climb into the 
fold! 

Of other care they little reckoning make 



U 1 ^ 



u v 



62 



POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON 






Than how to scramble at the shearers' 

feast, 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest. 
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know 

how to hold 
A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the 

least 120 

That to the faithful Herdman's art be- 
longs ! 
What recks it them ? What need they ? 

They are sped; 
And, when they list, their lean and flashy 

songs 
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched 

straw; 
The hungry sheep look up, and are not 

fed, 
But, swoln with wind and the rank mist 

they draw, 
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
Besides what the grim Wolf with privy 



130 

no 



Daily devours apace, and nothing said. 
But that two-handed engine at the door 
Stands ready to smite once, and smite 

more.". 
Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past 
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian 

Muse, 
And call the vales, and bid them hither 

cast 
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand 

hues. 
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers 

use 
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing 

brooks, 
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely 

looks, jj 

Throw hither all your quaint enamelled 

eyes, — — 

That on the green turf suck the honeyed 

showers, 140 

And purple all the ground with vernal 

flowers. 
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken 

dies, 
The tufted crow-toe, and pale gessamine, 
The white pink, and the pansy freaked 

with jet, 
The glowing violet, 

The musk-rose, and the well-attired wood- 
bine, 
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive 

head, 



And every flower that sad embroidery 

wears, ^ ,v ' 
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, 
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, 
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid 
lies. WV^j I5 i 

For so, to interpose a little ease, 
Let our frail thoughts dally with false sur- 
mise. 
Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sound- 
ing seas 
Wash far away, where'er thy bones, are 

hurled; -jl C# 

Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 
Where thou perhaps under the whelming 

tide 
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world; 
Or whether thou, to our moist vows de-.\ 

nied, 
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, 160 
Where the great Vision of the guarded 

mount 
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's 

hold. 
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt 

with ruth: 
And, O ye dolphins, waft the haples^ 
youth. ,. 

Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep 
no more, 
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 
Sunk though he be beneath the watery 

floor. 
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
And tricks his beams, and with new-span- 
gled ore 170 
Flames in the forehead of the morning , 

sky I. 
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, 
Through the dear might of Him that 

walked the waves, 
Where, other groves and other streams 

along, 
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, 
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and 

love. 
There entertain him all the Saints above, 
In solemn troops, and sweet societies, 179 
That sing, and singing in their glory move, 
And wipe the tears for ever from his 

eyes. 
Now, Lycidas, the Shepherds weep no 

more; 









\ 



SONNETS 



63 






Henceforth thou art the Genius of the 

shore, 
In thy large recompense, and shalt be 

good 
To all that wander in that perilous flood. 

Thus sang the uncouth Swain to the oaks 
and rills, \ 

tWhile the still Morn went out with sandals\ 
grey: 



He touched the tender stops of various 

quills, 
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay: V 
And now the sun had stretched out all the / 

hills, 190 

, And now was dropt into the western bay. 
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle 

blue: 
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures , 
\^ new. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN ITALY 



In the absence of evidence to the con- 
trary, we must assume that Milton wrote 
his six Italian poems in 1638-39, during 
his stay in Italy. Whether the lady whom 
they celebrate was a creature of flesh and 
blood or merely an abstraction of the south- 
ern type of beauty (sotta nova idea pelle- 
grina bellezza) has been a matter of dispute, 
though, it would seem, somewhat unneces- 
sarily. The first sonnet gives her dwelling- 
place as the " grassy vale of Reno;" and 
as the Reno flows near Bologna, that city 
is presumably meant. If Milton had been 
addressing an abstraction he would hardly 
have given it so definite a local habitation, 
or, even if he had done so, he would hardly 
have selected Bologna for the purpose. It 
was not until late in his Italian sojourn, 
after he had seen Florence, Rome, and Na- 
ples, and after the first keenness of im- 
pression had worn off, that he saw Bologna 
and its women. The conclusion seems in- 



escapable that the " donna leggiadra " of 
the sonnets was a Bolognese beauty, whom 
he encountered perhaps at Florence or 
Rome, and whose novel charms subdued 
his susceptible heart. The matter is after 
all of slight importance; for the poems 
show that the passion was a manageable 
one, of the right sort to be played with 
prettily in a foreign tongue, where necessa- 
rily the author's chief concern was to avoid 
the pitfalls of solecism. He did not suc- 
ceed altogether in avoiding them; but he 
did succeed in catching tolerably well the 
lighter amatory manner of the Italian son- 
netteers and canzonists. 

These poems have been several times 
translated, notably by Cowper, Langthorne, 
Masson, and Pattison. The present trans- 
lator follows Pattison's plan of rendering 
line for line, in an irregular metre, with- 
out rhyme. 



SONNET 

Donna leggiadra, il cui bel nome onora 
L' erbosa val di Reno e il nobil varco, 
Bene e colui d' ogni valore scarco 
Qual tuo spirto gentil non innamora, 

Che dolcemente mostrasi di fuora, 
De' sui atti soavi giammai parco, 
E i don', che son d' amor saette ed arco, 
La onde 1' alta tu virtu s' infiora. 

Quando tu vaga parli, o lieta canti, 
Che mover possa duro alpestre legno, 
Guardi ciascun agli occhi ed agli orecchi 



L' entrata, chi di te si truova indegno; 
Grazia sola di su gli vaglia, innanti 
Che '1 disio amoroso al cuor s' invecchi. 



TRANSLATION 

Lady gay and gracious, whose fair name 

honors 
The grassy vale of Reno, and the noble pass, 
Surely that man is empty of all worth 
Whom thy gentle spirit doth not enamour, — 
Thy spirit, that sweetly manifests itself, 
Never niggard of delightful actions, 



6 4 



POEMS WRITTEN IN ITALY 



Nor of those gifts (Love's arrows and his 
bow) 

Wherewith thy virtue high enflowers it- 
self. 

When thou speakest in thy beauty, or sing- 
est in thy joy — 

Sounds that might move the firm trees 
from the mountains — 

Let whoso finds himself unworthy of thy 
service 

Guard well the gateway of his sight and 
hearing ; 

Grace from above avail him 

Ere amorous desire lodge in his heart ! 



SONNET 

Qual in colle aspro, all' imbrunir di sera, 
L' avezza giovinetta pastorella 
Va bagnando 1' erbetta strana e bella 
Che mal si spande a disusata spera 

Fuor di sua natia alma prima vera, 
Cosi Amor meco insu la lingua snella 
Desta il fior novo di strania favella, 
Mentre io di te, vezzosamente altera, 

Canto, dal mio buon popol non inteso, 
E '1 bel Tamigi cangio col bell' Arno. 
Amor lo volse, ed io all' altrui peso 

Seppi ch' Amor cosa mai volse indarno. 
Deh ! foss' il mio cuor lento e '1 duro seno 
A chi pianta dal ciel si buon terreno. 



TRANSLATION 

As on a rough hillside, at dusk of evening, 
A little shepherd girl, as she is wont, 
Goes watering some fair flower that moves 

her wonder, 
A stranger in that clime, ill flourishing 
Far from the comfort of its native spring- 
time, — 
Even so doth Love upon my eager tongue 
Rear the new flower of a foreign speech, 
While I of thee, haughty and gracious one, 
Sing, of my own good folk not compre- 
hended, 
And change fair Thames for the fair Arno. 
Love willed it, and at others' cost 
I learned that Love wills nought in vain. 
Ah, that my slow heart and rude breast 

might be 
As kind a soil to Him who plants from 
Heaven ! 



CANZONE 

Ridonsi donne e giovani amorosi 
M' accostandosi attorno, e " Perche scrivi, 
Perche tu scrivi in lingua ignota e strana 
Verseggiando d' amor, e come t' osi ? 
Dinne, se la tua speme sia mai vana, 
E de' pensieri lo miglior t' arrivi ! " 
Cosi mi van burlando: " Altri rivi, 
Altri lidi t' aspettan, ed altre onde, 
Nelle cui verdi sponde 
Spuntati ad or ad or alia tua chioma 
L' immortal guiderdon d' eterne frondi. 
Perche alle spalle tue soverchia soma ? " 

Canzon, dirotti, e tu per me rispondi: 
" Dice mia Donna, e '1 suo dir e il mio 

cuore, 
' Questa e lingua di cui si vanta Amore.' " 

TRANSLATION 

The ladies and young lovers laugh at me, 
Standing in circle round me, and " Why 

write, — 
Why write thus in a language strange, un- 

mastered, 
Versifying of love ? How dost thou dare 

it? 
Speak, as thou wilt have thy hope not vain, 
And of thy thoughts the best betide thee ! " 
So they go mocking at me : " Other rivers, 
Other shores await thee, other waters, 
On whose green banks 
Now, even now, grows for thy hair 
The immortal guerdon of unfading fronds. 
Why on thy shoulders the superfluous 

load?" 
Canzone, I will tell thee, and do thou 

make answer: 
" My Lady saith (and her speech is my 

heart) 
' This is Love's language, of which Love is 

boastful.' " 



SONNET 

Diodati (e te '1 dirb con maraviglia), 
Quel ritroso io, ch' amor spreggiar solea 
E de' suoi lacci spesso mi ridea, 
Gia caddi, ov' uom dabben talor s' impig- 
lia. 

Ne treccie d' oro ne guancia vermiglia 
M' abbagliari si, ma sotto nova idea 



SONNETS 



65 



Pellegrina bellezza che '1 cuor bea, 
Portamenti alti onesti, e nelle ciglia 

Quel sereno fulgor d' amabil nero, 
Parole adorne di lingua piu d' una, 
E '1 cantar che di mezzo 1' emispero 

Traviar ben pub la faticosa Luna; 

E degli ocelli suoi avventa si gran fuoco 
Che 1' incerar gli orecchi mi fia poco. 

TRANSLATION 

Diodati (I tell it thee with wonder) 
That stubborn I, who did disparage love, 
And often mocked his wiles, have fallen al- 
ready 
Where worthiest men sometimes ensnare 

themselves. 
Nor golden tresses nor a vermeil cheek 
Undo me thus, but under novel guise 
A type of foreign beauty steeps my heart, 
A high and modest port, and in the eye- 
brows 
The quiet splendor of a lovely darkness, 
Rich words, and more than from a single 

language, 
And song that from her middle hemisphere 
Might draw the moon o'er-toiled; 
And from her eyes proceeds so strong a fire, 
To stop my ears with wax would help me 
little. 



SONNET 

Per certo i bei vostr' occhi, Donna mia, 
Esser non pu6 che non sian lo mio sole; 
Si mi percuoton forte, come ei suole, 
Per Y arene di Libia chi s' invia, 

Mentre un caldo vapor (ne senti pria) 
Da quel lato si spinge ove mi duole, 
Che forse amanti nelle lor parole 
Chiaman sospir; io non so che si sia. 

Parte rinchiusa e turbida si cela 

Scossomi il petto, e poi n' uscendo poco 
Quivi d' attorno o s' agghiaccia o s' in- 
giela; 

Ma quan to agli occhi giunge a trovar loco 
Tutte le notti a me suol far piovose, 
Finche mia alba rivien colma di rose. 

TRANSLATION 

In sooth, your beauteous eyes, my Lady, 

Cannot be other than my sun; 

So sore they smite me, as he smiteth 



The traveller in the sands of Libia; 
From that side where I feel my pain, out- 
gushes 
A burning vapor, never felt before, 
Which mayhap lovers in their language 
Call sighs; for me, I know not what it 

be. 
A part within lurks pent and turbid, 
Shaking my breast; a part forth-issuing 
Congeals and freezes in the air about; 
But whatso findeth passage to my eyes 
Is wont to darken all my nights with rain, 
Till Thou return, my day-spring crowned 
with roses. 



SONNET 

Giovane, piano, e semplicetto amante, 

Poiche fuggir me stesso in dubbio sono, 

Madonna, a voi del mio cuor 1' umil dono 

Far5 divoto. Io certo a prove tante 

L' ebbi fedele, intrepido, costante, 

Di pensieri leggiadro, accorto, e buono. 

Quando rugge il gran mondo, e scocca il 

tuono, 
S' arma di se, d' intero diamante; 
Tanto del forze e d' invidia sicuro, 
Di timori e speranze al popol use, 
Quanto d' ingegno e d' alto valor vago, 
E di cetra sonora, e delle Muse. 
Sol troverete in tal parte men duro 
Ove Amor mise V insanabil ago. 

TRANSLATION 

A young, and meek, and simple lover, 
Perplexed how I shall flee from my own 

self, 
Lady, the humble offering of my heart 
To you I dedicate: be sure, in many trials 
I found it faithful, constant, valorous, 
Gracious of thought, discreet, and good. 
When the great sky roars, or bursts the 

thunder, 
With itself it arms itself, with entire ada- 
mant, — 
As heedless of all violence or spite, 
Of vulgar hopes and fears, 
As 't is in love with noble gifts and worth, 
With the sonorous lyre, and with the 

Muses. 
In one sole part thou 'It find it not so 

strong, 
Where Love set his immedicable sting. 



POEMS WRITTEN DURING THE CIVIL WAR 
AND THE PROTECTORATE 

1642-1658 



LATER SONNETS 



From 1642, when he entered actively 
into the national struggle for liberty, until 
1658, when the duties of his Latin secre- 
taryship ceased, Milton wrote no English 
verse except in the way of some rather 
wooden translations from the Scriptures, 
and scattered sonnets, — seventeen sonnets 
in seventeen years. The translations may 
be dismissed without comment, but the 
sonnets are of manifold interest. They 
are the fugitive outcroppings of "that one 
talent which is death to hide," and consti- 
tute the only relief which he allowed him- 
self from his resolution to efface the singer 
in the fighter so long as his country's fate 
hung in the balance. Even in them, he 
does not throw off the weight of that reso- 
lution; for such of them as are not actual 
political manifestoes still cling closely to 
matter of fact. They are, in a word, oc- 
casional poetry; but they are lifted into 
permanence by the presence in them of 
the whole of a great personality, capable of 
giving to the most ordinary words an unac- 
countable resonance and distinction. 

The sonnets written after 1642 divide 
themselves into three groups, — those ad- 
dressed to personal friends, both men and 
women, those dealing with some aspect of 
public affairs, especially as represented by 
the great men of the time, and those of a 
purely autobiographic nature. 

Of the first group, the sonnets " To a 
Virtuous Young Lady," "To the Lady 
Margaret Ley," and " To Mistress Cathe- 
rine Thomson," are of particular interest, 
as showing the poet's growth away from 
the mere schoolboy amorousness of the 
Latin elegies and the gentle troubadour 
gallantry of the Italian Sonnets toward 



a high Puritan ideal of womanhood. Of 
these, the sonnet " To the Lady Margaret " 
is pitched in the lowest key. It was writ- 
ten shortly after Mary Powell's desertion. 
Phillips says of Milton's relations with the 
Lady Margaret, that "being now as it 
were a single man again, he made it his 
chief diversion now and then of an even- 
ing to visit" her, and that she, "being a 
woman of great wit and ingenuity, had a 
particular honor for him, and took much 
delight in his company, as likewise Captain 
Hobson, her husband, a very accomplished 
gentleman." The tone of the sonnet may 
have been determined by Milton's rumina- 
tion upon the springs of his own domestic 
misfortunes. Eight of the fourteen lines are 
devoted to a eulogy of the lady's father, 
James Ley, Earl of Marlborough, Lord 
President of the Council under Charles 
and one time Lord High Treasurer, whose 
death was believed to have been hastened 
by the sudden breaking up of Charles's 
third Parliament, as that of Isocrates was 
caused by news of the battle of Chseronea. 
Milton deems it a sufficient encomium 
upon the daughter to say that she reflects 
the honor of the father. In other words, 
what attracted him in her was probably 
the dignity with which she bore a great and 
good name, a dignity thrown into relief by 
what must have seemed to him the low- 
bred and selfish impulsiveness of his own 
wife, the daughter of a shifting cavalier 
squire. It is, one may say, the civic ideal 
of womanhood to which this sonnet gives a 
celebration quite Roman in its pith and 
measure. 

The sonnet " On the Religious Memory 
of Mrs. Catherine Thomson " is perhaps 



69 



7° 



POEMS DURING CIVIL WAR AND PROTECTORATE 



the least successful of the whole series. 
The personification of the lady's good 
deeds, azure -winged and purple -clad, 
guided by Faith and Love to Heaven, there 
to intercede for the soul of their mistress, 
is marked by the conceitfulness which was 
the bane of Milton's early manner. It is 
the only one of the sonnets which lacks the 
accent of simple conviction. Some interest 
attaches to it, however, in that it presents 
another aspect of the Puritan conception 
of woman, as she reveals herself in a life 
of active charity. 

A more sincere eulogy of Christian 
womanhood appears in the sonnet "To a 
Virtuous Young Lady." It has been plau- 
sibly conjectured that the person addressed 
was that Miss Davis whom Milton appears 
to have had some intention of marrying, 
in practical exemplification of the free doc- 
trines proclaimed in his divorce tracts. 
Whether this be true or not, the sonnet is 
very tender and exalted. The closing pic- 
ture of the wise virgin, waiting, her odorous 
lamp filled with " deeds of light," to find 
entrance 
..." when the Bridegroom with his feastful 

friends 
Passes to bliss at the mid-hour of night," 

seems breathed upon by the very breath of 
passion; but whether passion for the wo- 
man or for the thing she typifies it is hard 
to say. In his youth, all the warm and 
gorgeous imagery which clusters about the 
Hebraic idea of paradisaic love had had 
a strong attraction for Milton, a stronger 
attraction than it has had for any other 
English poet except Crashaw. In Lycidas 
and in the Epitaphium Damonis he had 
appropriated the idea with startling com- 
pleteness. This sonnet is the latest expres- 
sion of this mystical strain in his nature; 
for in Paradise Lost the idea, though put 
forward with emphasis, has become some- 
what intellectualized and pallid. In losing 
it, he lost one of those vital conceptions, 
at once sensuous and spiritual, which take 
hold of all the fibres of a poet's nature, — 



which may, indeed, be called the poet's 
peculiar dower. 

The other sonnets addressed to intimate 
friends are three in number. Two of them, 
the sonnet to Mr. Lawrence and the first to 
Cyriack Skinner, seem to be nothing more 
nor less than " poetical invitations to din- 
ner," in the manner suggested by Horace's 
" Quid bellicosus Cantaber." Both Law- 
rence and Skinner were frequently visitors 
at Milton's house in Petty France. Law- 
rence was the son of the President of 
Cromwell's Council, and about twenty 
years old at the earliest date, 1656, which 
can be assigned to the sonnet. Skinner, 
grandson of the famous jurist Sir Edward 
Coke, was a young barrister, a member of 
the famous republican debating club called 
the " Rota," which held its meetings at the 
Turk's Head in Palace Yard. The sonnets 
mark that bright spot in the poet's adult 
life which followed upon his second mar- 
riage. They offer an unusual combination 
of gravity and grace in the treatment of a 
trivial subject. Pattison says of them, " In 
these two sonnets he has shown that he 
could lay his hand gently on the strings, 
and take it off again. Milton's, indeed, is 
not the delicate touch of Desaugiers or 
Be*ranger, those masters of ' la chose legere : ' 
but what is wanted in suppleness is made 
up by dignity and religious resignedness 
of which the libertine song writer is inca- 
pable." 

The last sonnet of this group, that to 
Henry Lawes, has a higher interest, ex- 
trinsic and intrinsic. Milton's friendship 
with Lawes, beginning possibly in the 
poet's boyhood, at the house in Bread 
Street, strengthened by his growing taste 
for music and by their collaboration in 
the Arcades and Comus, must have been 
one of the most genial influences in the 
poet's life. The sonnet in question, though 
it first appeared in print prefixed to a col- 
lection of Choice Psalms, published by Lawes 
and his brother in 1648, had been written 
two years before, probably in the period of 



LATER SONNETS 



7i 



brief tranquillity which followed Milton's 
reconciliation with his wife, — a time when 
he would most have appreciated the deli- 
cate solace of his friend's art. Certainly a 
more exquisite word of praise than 

" Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee 

higher 
Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing, 
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory " 

was never given by one artist to another, 
unless it be that which Dante himself gave 
to Casella on the seashore at the foot of the 
mount of Purgation. 

A second group into which the sonnets 
fall, those dealing with public affairs and 
public men, includes, besides the lines on 
the New Forcers of Conscience, the famous 
tributes to Cromwell, Fairfax, and Vane, 
and the still more famous outburst upon 
the Piedmontese massacre. The first of 
these, written probably in 1646, marks the 
date of Milton's break with the Presbyte- 
rians and his adherence to the Indepen- 
dent party. The Westminster Assembly 
had made it clear that Presbyteriauism, 
although it had freed England from Laud, 
her "prelate lord," and had "renounced 
his liturgy" by supplanting the Prayer 
Book with the Directory, was no more in- 
clined to allow real intellectual liberty than 
Laud had been. Milton's contempt wreaks 
itself here upon the pamphleteer supporters 
of Presbyterianism, such as Adam Steward 
(" mere A. S."), and Edwards, who, in his 
Gangrcena, had named Milton among the 
heretics, and upon two members of the 
Westminster Assembly, Samuel Ruther- 
ford and George Gillespie (" Scotch what 
d'ye call," because of his harsh northern 
name). The contemptuous tone of the 
sonnet is subtly intensified by a dash of 
colloquialism in the diction, as if the Muse 
had forgotten her dignity in her disgust. 
The peculiar sonnet form used also contri- 
butes to the same end. The sonnetto colla 
coda, or tailed sonnet, had been long in use 
among Italian poets for purposes of satire 
and burlesque. The addition of the coda, 



by destroying the formal symmetry which 
gives the sonnet its peculiar distinction, 
made it a fitter weapon for attack upon a 
despised foe. It is instructive to read this 
sonnet in connection with the two on Te- 
trachordon, in which Milton poured out his 
contemptuous wrath upon his opponents in 
the divorce controversy. When he wrote 
these the iron had entered very deep into 
his soul. Many times he had used and was 
still to use poetry as a weapon against his 
enemies, but always with a biblical majesty 
of attack. Here he fights for once with the 
bitter rudeness and blind irritation of his 
pamphleteering mood, — a degradation of 
his ideal of poetry which could have come 
only from extreme weariness. 

The sonnets to Fairfax and to Cromwell 
were written on definite occasions, and are 
to be considered less as eulogies than as 
appeals. Some misconception has resulted 
from a failure to note the special juncture 
of affairs which brought forth these ap- 
peals. Fairfax, in July, 1648, had just 
cooped up in Colchester the Kentish insur- 
gents who had risen to aid the Duke of 
Hamilton in his invasion from the north. 
By his skill and valor Fairfax was bringing 
to a close the " second civil war," as he had 
broken the force of the first at the battle 
of Naseby. Looking forward to assured 
victory, Milton appeals to Fairfax to enter 
upon the nobler task of cleansing the coun- 
sels of the nation from those jobbers and 
self-seekers who, in the national crisis, had 
taken advantage of the opportunity for 
fraud. The Lord General was of a char- 
acter to invite such an appeal. Besides 
being a great soldier, he was a man of 
scholarly cultivation, of poetic imagination, 
of pure and upright life. Milton's admi- 
ration for Fairfax was staunch enough to 
survive the defection of the great and gen- 
tle patriot from the popular cause in 1649, 
when he drew back in horror from the plan 
of putting his king to death. As Milton 
appealed to Fairfax to free the secular 
power from corruption, so four years later 



7 2 



POEMS DURING CIVIL WAR AND PROTECTORATE 



he exhorted Cromwell to save the spiritual 
kingdom from bondage. In addition to the 
old foes of the pure church, the Presbyteri- 
ans, there had sprung up new foes in the 
shape of men who, though nominally Inde- 
pendents, desired to see ministers of the 
Gospel supported at the public expense. 
Of these Cromwell, doubtless from prac- 
tical considerations of state, proved to be 
one. Milton represented the extreme rad- 
ical wing of Independency, which not only 
held in abhorrence every interference of the 
secular power with the church, but declared 
that all ministers who accepted pay for 
their ministrations were " hireling wolves." 
This sonnet is Milton's cry to Cromwell to 
turn back into the true road. The exhor- 
tation was not heard; yet as had been the 
case before with Fairfax, Milton retained 
his admiration for his chief in the face of 
vital differences of thought. 

The sonnet on young Henry Vane, unlike 
the foregoing two, was not prompted by 
any definite public crisis, but sprang from 
a train of thought similar to that which 
had led to the Cromwell sonnet. The young 
statesman who, at twenty-four, had been 
governor of Massachusetts, and had then 
and afterwards learned to know 

"Both spiritual power and civil, what each 

, means, 
What severs each," 

stood as a pillar of hope to the poet in 
these years when he was brooding jealously 
upon " the bounds of either sword." 

The sonnet on the Piedmontese massacre 
disputes with the sonnet on his blindness 
the honor of first place among Milton's 
efforts in this form. No subject could have 
been more calculated to touch the inner- 
most springs of passion in him. The Vau- 
dois had cherished, long before Luther's 
time, presumably indeed from the earliest 
Christian centuries, a form of worship and 
a theology conceived in the purest spirit of 
the Reformation. Amid the intense reli- 



teenth centuries they had stood as a type 
of the prisca fides of the early church, a 
survival of the golden age of apostolic 
faith. In January, 1655, the Duke of 
Savoy determined to suppress them. An 
edict was issued ordering the inhabitants 
of three valleys either to leave the country 
or to embrace the Catholic religion. On 
their refusal to comply, a general massacre 
was instituted, and carried out with fright- 
ful refinements of cruelty. The news filled 
Protestant Europe with horror. Behind 
the slow, measured denunciation of Mil- 
ton's sonnet we can feel a mighty bulk of 
public wrath. In these wonderful lines the 
poet's art is at once at its soberest and at 
its intensest. Pattison has finely said of 
it : " It would not be easy to find a sonnet 
in any language of equal power to vibrate 
through all the fibres of feeling. Yet with 
what homely materials is the effect pro- 
duced ! Not only is there not a single 
purple patch in the wording, but of thought, 
or image, all that there is is a borrowed 
thought, and one repeatedly borrowed, — 
namely, Tertullian's saying, ' The blood of 
the martyrs is the seed of the church ; ' yet 
we may say that with a familiar quotation 
for its only thought, and with diction al- 
most below ordinary, its forceful flood of 
suppressed passion sweeps along the hack- 
neyed biblical phrases of which it is com- 
posed, just as a swollen river rolls before 
it the worn pebbles long ago brought down 
from the mountain side. From this sonnet 
we may learn that the poetry of a poem is 
lodged somewhere else than in its matter 
or its thoughts or its imagery or its words. 
Our heart is here taken by storm, but not 
by any of these things. The poet hath 
breathed on us, and we have received his 
inspiration. In this sonnet is realized 
Wordsworth's definition of poetry, ' the 
spontaneous overflow of powerful feel- 
ing."> 

Only one more group remains to be con- 
sidered, the sonnets purely personal and 
autobiographic. Of these there are four, 



LATER SONNETS 



73 



" When the Assault was intended to the 
City," the two on his blindness, and one on 
his second wife. The first of these presents 
Milton in a characteristic and at the same 
time unexpected light. On the thirteenth 
of November, 1642, the king's forces had 
advanced from their victory at Edgehill to 
Turnham Green, on the outskirts of Lon- 
don. An immediate assault was expected, 
and Essex hastened out with regular forces 
and trainbands to the number of 24,000 to 
engage the enemy. The occasion was one 
of such imminent danger that Milton's atti- 
tude in staying quietly in his study to write 
a sonnet pleading that his own house be 
spared from rapine by the cavalier troopers, 
seems rather chilly and ungenerous, not to 
say un virile. The fact is, that he was at 
once unusually open to the enthusiasm of 
ideas, and unusually callous to the raw 
excitement of events. He had by nature 
much of the wanness of the idealist ; it is, 
indeed, not difficult to believe that a con- 
ception of his failing in this respect, and 
the hope of overcoming it, biased his ac- 
ceptance of public office when, a few years 
later, it was offered him. Now, with the 
brute force of arms drawing near, it was 
natural for him to retire haughtily into the 
kingdom of the mind, and especially to that 
city of the kingdom where his power was 
most absolute. The curious thing is that 
this haughtiness is tempered by an unex- 
pected humility. The poet seems to bow 
his head before the conqueror, and to offer 
his music as the price of leniency, with a 
Greek submission to the Fates strangely at 
variance with his habitual temper. 

The first sonnet on his blindness shows 
submission to fate in a larger sense and in 
a deeply Christian mood. His blindness 
had been total for three years, and he had 
not yet seen his way to using, in darkness, 
" that one talent which is death to hide." 
He seemed to have made the last and great 
sacrifice. The manner in which the human 



pining of a strong man after the work de- 
nied him to do emerges here into con- 
templation of the sufficiency of the divine 
Worker, is so fine as to be beyond the 
reach of praise. The poet seems to stand 
by the battle chariot of God, powerless 
with wounds, but martial and attentive, 
while His aides and ensigns bear messages 
of the strife still waging. The second 
sonnet on his blindness, addressed to Cy- 
riack Skinner, takes a more everyday view. 
It is pathetic to see Milton comforting 
himself in his calamity with the belief that 
his second pamphlet against Salmasius, with 
its scurrility, its personal abuse, and its 
poor logic, was worth the price of his eyes; 
and the touch of vanity in the opening lines 
only adds to the pathos. Yet the purely 
human courage which this second sonnet 
breathes, its refusal to " bate a jot of heart 
or hope," its determination to " still bear 
up and steer right onward," is almost as 
fine as the more exalted resignation of the 
first. 

The last of Milton's sonnets, that on his 
dead wife, is the tenderest of all his utter- 
ances. He had married Mrs. Catharine 
Woodcock on the 12th of November, 1656. 
Two years later she died in child-birth, and 
a month later her baby followed her. We 
know nothing of her or her relations with 
Milton beyond what the sonnet gives; but 
that is enough. The fact that he had never 
seen her face in life gives to this account of 
his veiled vision of her in sleep a peculiar 
poignancy ; and the closing lines, 

" But O ! as to embrace me she inclined 
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my 
night," 

are in effect his farewell to the warmer 
human side of life. Henceforth his heart, 
too, was to dwell in darkness. The double 
darkness was given him as a background 
upon which to trace his vision of heaven 
and earth and hell in stupendous lines of 
light. 



74 



POEMS DURING CIVIL WAR AND PROTECTORATE 



SONNETS 



WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS IN- 
TENDED TO THE CITY 

(November, 1642) 

Captain, or colonel, or knight in arms, 
Whose chance on these defenceless doors 

may seize, 
If deed of honour did thee ever please, 
Guard them, and him within protect from 

harms. 
He can requite thee, for he knows the 

charms 
That call fame on such gentle acts as these, 
And he can spread thy name o'er lands and 

seas, 
Whatever clime the sun's bright circle 

warms. 
Lift not thy spear against the Muse's bower; 
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare 
The house of Pindarus, when temple and 

tower 
Went to the ground; and the repeated 

air 
Of sad Electra's Poet had the power 
To save the Athenian walls from ruin 

bare. 



TO A VIRTUOUS YOUNG LADY 

(1644) 

Lady ! that in the prime of earliest youth 
Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the 

green, 
And with those few art eminently seen, 
That labour up the Hill of Heavenly Truth, 
The better part with Mary and with 

Ruth 
Chosen thou hast, and they that overween, 
And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen, 
No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth. 
Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends 
To fill thy odorous Lamp with deeds of 

light, 
And Hope that reaps not shame; therefore 

be sure, 
Thou, when the Bridegroom with his feast- 

ful friends 



Passes to bliss at the mid hour of night, 
Hast gained thy entrance, Virgin wise and 
pure. 

TO THE LADY MARGARET LEY 

(1644-5) 

Daughter to that good Earl, once Presi- 
dent 

Of England's Council and her Treasury, 

Who lived in both unstained with gold 
or fee, 

And left them both, more in himself con- 
tent, 
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament 

Broke him, as that dishonest victory 

At Chseronea, fatal to liberty, 

Killed with report that old man eloquent, 
Though later born than to have known the 
days 

Wherein your father flourished, yet by 
you, 

Madam, methinks I see him living yet: 
So well your words his noble virtues praise 

That all both judge you to relate them 
true 

And to possess them, honoured Margaret. 



ON THE DETRACTION WHICH 
FOLLOWED UPON MY WRIT- 
ING CERTAIN TREATISES 

(1645-6) 

A book was writ of late called Tetrachordon, 
And woven close, both matter, form, and 

style ; 
The subject new: it walked the town a 

while, 
Numbering good intellects; now seldom 

pored on. 
Cries the stall-reader, " Bless us ! what a 

word on 
A title-page is this ! " ; and some in file 
Stand spelling false, while one might 

walk to Mile- 
End Green. Why, is it harder, sirs, than 

Gordon, 



SONNETS 



75 



Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp ? 

Those rugged names to our like mouths 

grow sleek 
That would have made Quintilian stare 

and gasp. 
Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John 

Cheek, 
Hated not learning worse than toad or 

asp, 
When thou taught'st Cambridge and 

King Edward Greek. 

ON THE SAME 
(1645-6) 

I did but prompt the age to quit their 
clogs 

By the known rules of ancient liberty, 

When straight a barbarous noise envi- 
rons me 

Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and 
dogs; 
As when those hinds that were transformed 
to frogs 

Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny, 

Which after held the Sun and Moon in 
fee. 

But this is got by casting pearl to hogs, 
That bawl for freedom in their senseless 
mood, 

And still revolt when Truth would set 
them free. 

Licence they mean when they cry Lib- 
erty; 
For who loves that must first be wise and 
good: 

But from that mark how far they rove 
we see, 

For all this waste of wealth and loss of 
blood. 



ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CON- 
SCIENCE UNDER THE LONG 
PARLIAMENT 

(1646) 

Because you have thrown off your Prelate 
Lord, 
And with stiff vows renounced his Litur- 

§7' 

To seize the widowed whore Plurality, 
From them whose sin ye envied, not ab- 
horred, 



Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword 
To force our consciences that Christ set 

free, 
And ride us with a Classic Hierarchy, 
Taught ye by mere A. S. and Ruther- 
ford ? 
Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure 
intent, 
Would have been held in high esteem 

with Paul 
Must now be named and printed heretics 
By shallow Edwards and Scotch What- 
d' ye-call ! 
But we do hope to find out all your 

tricks, 
Your plots and packing, worse than those 
of Trent, 

That so the Parliament 
May with their wholesome and preventive 

shears 
Clip your phylacteries, though baulk your 
ears, 

And succour our just fears, 
When they shall read this clearly in you! 
charge: I 

New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large 



TO MR. H. LAWES ON HIS AIRS 
(1646) 

Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured 

song 
First taught our English music how to 

span 
Words with just note and accent, not to 

scan 
With Midas' ears, committing short and 

long, 
Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the 

throng, 
With praise enough for Envy to look 

wan; 
To after age thou shalt be writ the man 
That with smooth air couldst humour 

best our tongue. 
Thou honour'st Verse, and Verse must 

lend her wing 
To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' 

quire, 
That tuuest their happiest lines in hymn 

or story. 
Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee 

higher 



7 6 



POEMS DURING CIVIL WAR AND PROTECTORATE 



Than his Casella, whom he wooed to 

sing, 
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory. 



ON THE RELIGIOUS MEMORY 
OF MRS. CATHERINE THOM- 
SON, MY CHRISTIAN FRIEND, 
DECEASED DEC. 16, 1646 

(1646) 

Whm Faith and Love, which parted from 

thee never, 
Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with 

God, 
Meekly thou didst resign this earthy 

load 
Of death, called life, which us from life 

doth sever. 
Thy works, and alms, and all thy good en- 
deavour, 
Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were 

trod; 
But, as Faith pointed with her golden 

rod, 
Followed thee up to joy and bliss for 

ever. 
Love led them on; and Faith, who knew 

them best 
Thy handmaids, «lad them o'er with pur- 
ple beams 
And azure wings, that up they flew so 

drest, 
And speak the truth of thee on glorious 

themes 
Before the Judge; who thenceforth bid 

thee rest, 
And drink thy fill of pure immortal 

streams. 



ON THE LORD GENERAL FAIR- 
FAX AT THE SIEGE OF COL- 
CHESTER 

(1648) 

Fairfax, whose name in arms through 

Europe rings, 
Filling each mouth with envy or with 

praise, 
And all her jealous monarchs with amaze, 
And rumours loud that daunt remotest 

kings, 



Thy firm unshaken virtue eyer brings 
Victory home, though new rebellions 

raise 
Their Hydra heads, and the false North 

displays 
Her broken league to imp their serpent 

wings. 
O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand 

(For what can war but endless war still 

breed ?) 
Till truth and right from violence be 

freed, 
And public faith cleared from the shame- 
ful brand 
Of public fraud. In vain doth Valour 

bleed, 
While Avarice and Rapine share the 

land. 



TO THE LORD GENERAL CROM- 
WELL, ON THE PROPOSALS OF 
CERTAIN MINISTERS AT THE 
COMMITTEE FOR PROPAGA- 
TION OF THE GOSPEL 

(1652) 

Cromwell, our chief of men, who through 
a cloud 

Not of war only, but detractions rude, 

Guided by faith and matchless forti- 
tude, 

To peace and truth thy glorious way hast 
ploughed, 
And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud 

Hast reared God's trophies, and his work 
pursued, 

While Darwen stream, with blood of 
Scots imbrued, 

And Dunbar field, resounds thy praises 
loud, 
And Worcester's laureate wreath: yet much 
remains 

To conquer still; Peace hath her victo- 
ries 

No less renowned than War: new foes 
arise, 
Threatening to bind our souls with secular 
chains. 

Help us to save free conscience from the 
paw 

Of hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their 
maw. 



SONNETS 



77 



TO SIR HENRY VANE THE 
YOUNGER 

(1652) 

Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel 

old, 
Than whom a better senator ne'er held 
The helm of Rome, when gowns, not 

arms, repelled 
The fierce Epirot and the African bold, 
Whether to settle peace, or to unfold 
The drift of hollow states hard to be 

spelled; 
Then to advise how war may best, up- 
held, 
Move by her two main nerves, iron and 

gold, 
In all her equipage; besides, to know 
Both spiritual power and civil, what 

each means, 
What severs each, thou hast learned, 

which few have done. 
The bounds of either sword to thee we 

owe: 
Therefore on thy firm hand Religion 

leans 
In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son. 



ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN 
PIEMONT 

(1655) 

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered Saints, 
whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains 

cold; 
Even them who kept thy truth so pure 
of old, 
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and 

stones, 
Forget not: in thy book record their groans 
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient 

fold 
Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that 
rolled 
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their 

moans 
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
To heaven. Their martyred blood and 
ashes sow 



O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth 
sway 
The triple Tyrant; that from these may 
grow 
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way, 
Early may fly the Babylonian woe. 



ON HIS BLINDNESS 

(i655) 

When I consider how my light is spent 

Ere half my days in this dark world and 
wide, 

And that one Talent which is death to 
hide 

Lodged with me useless, though my soul 
more bent 
To serve therewith my Maker, and pre- 
sent 

My true account, lest He returning chide, 

" Doth God exact day-labour, light de- 
nied ? " 

I fondly ask. But Patience, to pre- 
vent 
That murmur, soon replies, " God doth 
not need 

Either man's work or his own gifts. 
Who best 

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. 
His state 
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, 

And post o'er land and ocean without 
rest; 

They also serve who only stand and 
wait." 

"""TO" AHTlawrence 

(1656) 

Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, 
Now that the fields are dank, and ways 

are mire, 
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by 

the fire 
Help waste a sullen day, what may be 
won 
From the hard season gaining ? Time will 
run 
On smoother, till Favonius reinspire 
The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh at- 
tire 



7 8 



POEMS DURING CIVIL WAR AND PROTECTORATE 



The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor 

spun. 
What neat repast shall feast us, light and 

choice, 
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we 

may rise 
To hear the lute well touched, or artful 

voice 
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air ? 
He who of those delights can judge, and 

spare 
To interpose them oft, is not unwise. 



TO CYRIACK SKINNER 

(1656) 

Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal 
bench 

Of British Themis, with no mean ap- 
plause, 

Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, 
our laws, 

Which others at their bar so often 
wrench, 
To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to 
drench 

In mirth that after no repenting draws; 

Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause, 

And what the Swede intend, and what 
the French. 
To measure life learn thou betimes, and 
know 

Toward solid good what leads the nearest 
way; 

For other things mild Heaven a time or- 
dains, 
And disapproves that care, though wise in 
show, 

That with superfluous burden loads the 
day, 

And, when God sends a cheerful hour, 
refrains 



TO THE SAME 

Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, 
though clear, 
To outward view, of blemish or of spot, 



Bereft of light, their seeing have for- 
got ; 

Nor to their idle orbs doth sight ap- 
pear 
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the 
year, 

Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not 

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate 
a jot 

Of heart or hope, but still bear up and 
steer 
Right onward. What supports me, dost 
thou ask ? 

The conscience, friend, to have lost them 
overplied 

In Liberty's defence, my noble task, 
Of which all Europe rings from side to 
side. 

This thought might lead me through the 
world's vain mask 

Content, though blind, had I no better 
guide. 



ON HIS DECEASED WIFE 
(1658) 

Methought I saw my late espoused saint 

Brought to me like Alcestis from the 
grave, 

Whom Jove's great son to her glad hus- 
band gave, 

Rescued from Death by force, though 
pale and faint. 
Mine, as whom washed from spot of child- 
bed taint 

Purification in the Old Law did save, 

And such as yet once more I trust to 
have 

Full sight of her in Heaven without re- 
straint, 
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. 

Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied 
sight 

Love, sweetness, goodness, in her per- 
son shifted 
So clear as in no face with more delight. 

But, oh ! as to embrace me she in- 
clined, 

I waked, she fled, and day brought back 
my night. 



"/ 



, <M. 









TRANSLATIONS 



79 



TRANSLATIONS 



THE FIFTH ODE OF HORACE, 
LIB. I. 

Quis multa gracilis tepuer in rosa. 

Rendered almost word for word, without 
rhyme, according' to the Latin measure, as near 
as the language will permit. 

What slender youth, bedewed with liquid 

odours, 
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave, 
Pyrrha ? For whom bind'st thou 
In wreaths thy golden hair, 
Plain in thy neatness ? Oh, how oft shall 

he 
On faith and changed gods complain, and 
seas 
Rough with black winds and storms 
Unwonted shall admire, 
Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold; 
Who always vacant, always amiable, 
Hopes thee, of flattering gales 
Unmindful ! Hapless they 
To whom thou untried seem'st fair ! Me, 

in my vowed 
Picture, the sacred wall declares to have 
hung 
My dank and dropping weeds 
To the stern God of Sea. 



THE ORIGINAL 

AD PYRRHAM. ODE V. 

Horatius ex Pyrrhce illecebris tanquam e nau- 
fragio enataverat, cujus amove irretitos affirmat 
esse miseros. 

Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa 
Perfusus liquidis urget odoribus 
Grato, Pyrrha, sub antro ? 
Cui flavam religas comam 
Simplex munditie ? Heu, quoties fidem 
Mutatosque Deos flebit, et aspera 
Nigris sequora ventis 
Emirabitur insolens, 
Qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea; 
Qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem, 
Sperat, nescius aurae 

Fallacis ! Miseri quibus 



Intentata nites. Me tabula sacer 
Votiva paries indicat uvida 
Suspendisse potenti 
Vestimenta maris Deo. 



NINE OF THE PSALMS DONE 
INTO METRE 

Wherein all, but what is in a different charac- 
ter, are the very words of the Text, translated 
from the original. 

(April, 1648.) 
PSALM LXXX 

1 Thou Shepherd that dost Israel keep, 

Give ear in time of need, 
Who leadest like a flock of sheep 

Thy loved Joseph's seed, 
That sitt'st between the Cherubs bright, 

Between their wings outspread; 
Shine forth, and from thy cloud give light, 

And on our foes thy dread. 

2 In Ephraim's view and Benjamin's, 

And in Manasseh's sight, io 

Awake 1 thy strength, come, and be seen 
To save us by thy might. 

3 Turn us again; thy grace divine 

To us, O God, vouchsafe ; 
Cause thou thy face on us to shine, 
And then we shall be safe. 

4 Lord God of Hosts, how long wilt thou, 

How long wilt thou declare 
Thy 2 smoking wrath, and angry brow, 
Against thy people's prayer ? 20 

5 Thou feed'st them with the bread of 

tears ; 
Their bread with tears they eat; 
And mak'st them largely 3 drink the 

tears 
Wherewith their cheeks are wet. 

6 A strife thou mak'st us and a prey 

To every neighbour foe; 
Among themselves they 4 laugh, they 4 
play, 
And 4 flouts at us they throw. 



1 Gnorera. 
s Shalish. 



2 Gnashanta. 
4 Jilgnugu. 



8o 



POEMS DURING CIVIL WAR AND PROTECTORATE 



7 Return us, and thy grace divine, 

O God of Hosts, vouchsafe ; 30 

Cause thou thy face on us to shine, 
And then we shall be safe. 

8 A Vine from Egypt thou hast brought, 

Thy free love made it thine, 
And drov'st out nations proud and haut, 
To plant this lovely Vine. 

9 Thou didst prepare for it a place, 

And root it deep and fast, 
That it began to grow apace, 

And filled the land at last. 40 

10 With her green shade that covered all 

The hills were overspread ; 
Her boughs as high as cedars tall 
Advanced their lofty head. 

11 Her branches on the western side 

Down to the sea she sent, 

And upward to that river wide 

Her other branches went. 

12 Why hast thou laid her hedges low, 

And broken down her fence, 50 

That all may pluck her, as they go, 
With rudest violence ? 

13 The tusked boar out of the wood 

Upturns it by the roots; 
Wild beasts there browse, and make 
their food 
Her grapes and tender shoots. 

14 Return now, God of Hosts; look down 

From Heaven, thy seat divine; 
Behold us, but without a frown, 

And visit this thy Vine. 60 

15 Visit this Vine, which thy right hand 

Hath set, and planted long, 
And the young branch, that for thy- 
self 
Thou hast made firm and strong. 

16 But now it is consumed with fire, 

And cut with axes down; 
They perish at thy dreadful ire, 
At thy rebuke and frown. 

17 Upon the Man of thy right hand 

Let thy good hand be laid; 70 

Upon the Son of Man, whom Thou 
Strong for thyself hast made. 

18 So shall we not go back from thee 

To ways of sin and shame : 
Quicken us thou; then gladly we 
Shall call upon thy Name. 

19 Return us, and thy grace divine, 

Lord God of Hosts, vouchsafe : 
Cause thou thy face on us to shine, 
And then we shall be safe. 80 



PSALM LXXXI 

1 To God our strength sing loud and 

clear; 
Sing loud to God our King; 
To Jacob's God, that all may hear, 
Loud acclamations ring. 

2 Prepare a hymn, prepare a song; 

The timbrel hither bring; 
The cheerful psaltery bring along, 
And harp with pleasant string. 

3 Blow, as is wont, in the new moon, 

With trumpets' lofty sound, 10 

The appointed time, the day whereon 
Our solemn feast comes round. 

4 This was a statute given of old 

For Israel to observe, 
A law of Jacob's God to hold, 

From whence they might not swerve. 

5 This he a testimony ordained 

In Joseph, not to change, 
When as he passed through Egypt- 
land; 
The tongue I heard was strange. 20 

6 From burden, and from slavish toil, 

I set his shoulder free; 
His hands from pots, and miry soil, 
Delivered were by me. 

7 When trouble did thee sore assail, 

On me then didst thou call, 
And I to free thee did not fail, 

And led thee out of thrall. 
I answered thee in x thunder deep, 

With clouds encompassed round; 30 
I tried thee at the water steep 

Of Meriba renowned. 

8 Hear, O my people, hearken well : 

I testify to thee, 
Thou ancient stock of Israel, 
If thou wilt list to me: 

9 Throughout the land of thy abode 

No alien God shall be, 
Nor shalt thou to a foreign god 

In honour bend thy knee. 40 

10 I am the Lord thy God, which brought 

Thee out of Egypt-land; 
Ask large enough, and I, besought, 
Will grant thy full demand. 

11 And yet my people would not hear, 

Nor hearken to my voice ; 
And Israel, whom I loved so dear, 
Misliked me for his choice. 
1 Be Sether ragnam. 



TRANSLATIONS 



81 



12 Then did I leave them to their will, 

And to their wandering mind ; 50 

Their own conceits they followed still 
Their own devices blind. 

13 Oh that my people would be wise, 

To serve me all their days ! 

And oh that Israel would advise 

To walk my righteous ways ! 

14 Then would I soon bring down their foes, 

That now so proudly rise, 
And turn my baud against all those 
That are their enemies. 60 

15 Who hate the Lord should then be fain 

To bow to him and bend; 
But they, his people, should remain; 
Their time should have no end. 

16 And he would feed them from the shock 

With flour of finest wheat, 

And satisfy them from the rock 

With honey for their meat. 

PSALM LXXXII 

1 God in the l great 1 assembly stands 

Of kings and lordly states; 
2 Among the gods 2 on both his hands 
He judges and debates. 

2 How long will ye 3 pervert the right 

With 3 judgment false and wrong, 
Favouring the wicked by your might, 
Who thence grow bold and strong ? 

3 4 Regard the 4 weak and fatherless ; 

4 Despatch the 4 poor man's cause ; 10 
And 5 raise the man in deep distress 
By 5 just and equal laws. 

4 Defend the poor and desolate, 

And rescue from the hands 
Of wicked men the low estate 
Of him that help demands. 

5 They know not, nor will understand; 

In darkness they walk on; 
The earth's foundations all are 6 moved, 
And 6 out of order gone. 20 

6 I said that ye were gods, yea all 

The sons of God Most High; 

7 But ye shall die like men, and fall 

As other princes die. 

8 Rise, God; 7 judge thou the earth in 

might; 
This wicked earth 7 redress ; 
For thou art he who shalt by right 
The nations all possess. 



1 Bagna-dath-el. 
3 Tishphetu gnavel. 
5 Hatzdiku. 



8 Jimmotu. 



2 Bekerev. 
4 Shiphtudal. 
7 Shiphta. 



PSALM LXXXII I 

1 Be not thou silent now at length; 

O God, hold not thy peace: 
Sit thou not still, O God of strength; 
We cry and do not cease. 

2 For lo ! thy furious foes now l swell, 

And 1 storm outrageously; 
And they that hate thee, proud and fell, 
Exalt their heads full high. 

3 Against thy people they 2 contrive 

3 Their plots and counsels deep; 
4 Them to ensnare they chiefly strive 
5 Whom thou dost hide and keep. 

4 " Come, let us cut them off," say they, 

" Till they no nation be; 
That Israel's name for ever may 
Be lost in memory." 

5 For they consult 6 with all their might, 

And all as one in mind 
Themselves against thee they unite, 
And in firm union bind. 20 

6 The tents of Edom, and the brood 

Of scornful Ishmael, 
Moab, with them of Hagar's blood, 
That in the desert dwell, 

7 Gebal and Amnion there conspire, 

And hateful Amalec, 
The Philistines, and they of Tyre, 
Whose bounds the sea doth check. 

8 With them great Ashur also bands, 

And doth confirm the knot ; 30 

All these have lent their armed hands 
To aid the sons of Lot. 

9 Do to them as to Midian bold, 

That wasted all the coast ; 
To Sisera, and as is told 

Thou didst to Jabin's host, 
When at the brook of Kishon old 

They were repulsed and slain, 

10 At End or quite cut off, and rolled 

As dung upon the plain. 40 

11 As Zeb and Oreb evil sped, 

So let their princes speed; 
As Zeba and Zalmunna bled, 
So let their princes bleed. 

12 For they amidst their pride have said, 

" By right now shall we seize 
God's houses, and will now invade 
7 Their stately palaces." 

13 My God, oh make them as a wheel; 

No quiet let them find ; 50 

1 Jehemajun. 2 Jagnarimu. 3 Sod. 

4 Jithjagnatsu gnal. 5 Tsephuneca. 

6 Lev jachdau. 7 Neoth Elohim bears both. 



82 



POEMS DURING CIVIL WAR AND PROTECTORATE 



Giddy and restless let them reel, 
Like stubble from the wind. 

14 As, token an aged wood takes fire 

Which on a sudden strays, 
The greedy flame runs higher and higher, 
Till all the mountains blaze; 

15 So with thy whirlwind them pursue, 

And with thy tempest chase; 

16 l And till they 1 yield thee honour due, 

Lord, fill with shame their face. 6o 

17 Ashamed and troubled let them be, 

Troubled and shamed for ever, 
Ever confounded, and so die 
With shame, and scape it never. 

18 Then shall they know that thou, whose 

name 
Jehovah is, alone 
Art the Most High, and thou the same 
O'er all the earth art One. 



PSALM LXXXIV 

1 How lovely are thy dwellings fair ! 

O Lord of Hosts, how dear 
The pleasant tabernacles are 
Where thou dost dwell so near ! 

2 My soul doth long and almost die 

Thy courts, O Lord, to see; 
My heart and flesh aloud do cry, 
O living God, for thee. 

3 There even the sparrow, freed from 

wrong, 

Hath found a house of rest; io 

The swallow there, to lay her young, 

Hath built her brooding nest; 
Even by thy altars, Lord of Hosts, 

They find their safe abode; 
And home they fly from round the coasts 

Toward thee, my King, my God. 

4 Happy who in thy house reside, 

Where thee they ever praise ! 

5 Happy whose strength in thee doth 

bide, 
And in their hearts thy ways ! 20 

6 They pass through Baca's thirsty vale, 

That dry and barren ground, 
As through a fruitful watery dale 
Where springs and showers abound. 

7 They journey on from strength to 

strength 
With joy and gladsome cheer, 
Till all before our God at length 
In Sion do appear. 

1 They seek thy name : Heb. 



8 Lord God of Hosts, hear now my 

prayer, 
O Jacob's God, give ear: 30 

9 Thou, God, our shield, look on the 

face 
Of thy anointed dear. 

10 For one day in thy courts to be 

Is better and more blest 
Than in the joys of vanity 

A thousand days at best. 
I in the temple of my God 

Had rather keep a door 
Than dwell in tents and rich abode 

With sin for evermore. 40 

11 For God, the Lord, both sun and shield, 

Gives grace and glory bright ; 
No good from them shall be withheld 
Whose ways are just and right. 

12 Lord God of Hosts that reign'st on high, 

That man is truly blest 

Who only on thee doth rely, 

And in thee only rest. 



PSALM LXXXV 

1 Thy land to favour graciously 

Thou hast not, Lord, been slack; 
Thou hast from hard captivity 
Returned Jacob back. 

2 The iniquity thou didst forgive 

That wrought thy people woe, 

And all their sin that did thee grieve 

Hast hid where none shall know. 

3 Thine anger all thou hadst removed, 

And calmly didst return 10 

From thy 1 fierce wrath, which we had 
proved 
Far worse than fire to burn. 

4 God of our saving health and peace, 

Turn us, and us restore; 
Thine indignation cause to cease 
Toward us, and chide no more. 

5 Wilt thou be angry without end, 

For ever angry thus ? 
Wilt thou thy frowning ire extend 
From age to age on us ? 20 

6 Wilt thou not 2 turn and hear our voice, 

And thus again 2 revive, 
That so thy people may rejoice, 
By thee preserved alive ? 

7 Cause us to see thy goodness, Lord; 

To us thy mercy shew; 

1 Heb. : The burning heat of thy wrath. 

2 Heb. : Turn to quicken us. 



TRANSLATIONS 



83 



Thy saving health to us afford, 
And life in us renew. 

8 And now what God the Lord will speak 

I will go straight and hear, 30 

For to his people he speaks peace, 

And to his saints /u^ dear; 
To his dear saints he will speak peace: 

But let them never more 
Return to folly, but surcease 

To trespass as before. 

9 Surely to such as do him fear 

Salvation is at hand, 
And glory shall ere long appear 

To dwell within our land. 40 

10 Mercy and Truth, that long were missed, 

Now joyfully are met; 
Sweet Peace and Righteousness have 
kissed, 
And hand in hand are set. 

11 Truth from the earth like to a flower 

Shall bud and blossom then; 
And Justice from her heavenly bower 
Look down on mortal men. 

12 The Lord will also then bestow 

Whatever thing is good ; 50 

Our land shall forth in plenty throw 
Her fruits to be our food. 

13 Before him Righteousness shall go, 

His royal harbinger : 
Then l will he come, and not be slow; 
His footsteps cannot err. 



PSALM LXXXVI 

1 Thy gracious ear, O Lord, incline ; 

hear me, / thee pray; 

For I am poor, and almost pine 
With need and sad decay. 

2 Preserve my soul ; for 2 I have trod 

Thy ways, and love the just; 
Save thou thy servant, O my God, 
Who still in thee doth trust. 

3 Pity me, Lord, for daily thee 

1 call ; 4 Oh make rejoice 10 
Thy servant's soul ! for, Lord, to thee 

I lift my soul and voice. 
5 For thou art good; thou, Lord, art 
prone 

1 JTeb. : He will set his steps to the way. 
* Heb. : I am good, loving, a doer of good & holy 
things. 



To pardon; thou to all 
Art full of mercy, thou alone, 
To them that on thee call. 

6 Unto my supplication, Lord, 

Give ear, and to the cry 
Of my incessant prayers afford 

Thy hearing graciously. 20 

7 I in the day of my distress 

Will call on thee for aid; 
For thou wilt grant me free access, 
And answer what I prayed. 

8 Like thee among the gods is none, 

Lord; nor any works 

Of all that other gods have done 
Like to thy glorious works. 

9 The nations all whom thou hast made 

Shall come, and all shall frame 30 
To bow them low before thee, Lord, 
And glorify thy name. 

10 For great thou art, and wonders great 

By thy strong hand are done ; 
Thou in thy everlasting seat 
Remainest God alone. 

11 Teach me, O Lord, thy way most right; 

1 in thy truth will bide; 

To fear thy name my heart unite ; 
So shall it never slide. 40 

12 Thee will I praise, O Lord my God, 

Thee honour and adore 
With my whole heart, and blaze 
abroad 
Thy name for evermore. 

13 For great thy mercy is toward me, 

And thou hast freed my soul, 
Ev'n from the lowest hell set free, 
From deepest darkness foul. 

14 O God, the proud against me rise, 

And violent men are met 50 

To seek my life, and in their eyes 
No fear of thee have set. 

15 But thou, Lord, art the God most 

mild, 
Readiest thy grace to shew, 
Slow to be angry, and art styled 
Most merciful, most true. 
1G Oh turn to me thy face at length, 
And me have mercy on; 
Unto thy servant give thy strength, 
And save thy handmaid's son. 60 

17 Some sign of good to me afford, 
And let my foes then see, 
And be ashamed, because thou, Lord, 
Dost help and comfort me. 



8 4 



POEMS DURING CIVIL WAR AND PROTECTORATE 



PSALM LXXXVII 

1 Among the holy mountains high 

Is his foundation fast; 
There seated in his sanctuary, 
His temple there is placed. 

2 Sion's fair gates the Lord loves more 

Than all the dwellings fair 
Of Jacob's land, though there be store, 
And all within his care. 

3 City of God, most glorious things 

Of thee abroad are spoke. io 

I mention Egypt, where proud kings 
Did our forefathers yoke; 

4 I mention Babel to my friends, 

Philistia/uW of scorn, 
And Tyre, with Ethiop's utmost ends : 
Lo ! this man there was born. 

5 But twice that praise shall in our ear 

Be said of Sion last : 
This and this man was born in her; 
High God shall fix her fast. 20 

6 The Lord shall write it in a scroll, 

That ne'er shall be out-worn, 
When he the nations doth enroll, 
That this man there was born. 

7 Both they who sing and they who dance 

With sacred songs are there; 
In thee fresh brooks and soft streams 
glance, 
And all my fountains clear. 



PSALM LXXXVIII 

1 Lord God, that dost me save and keep, 

All day to thee I cry, 
And all night long before thee weep, 
Before thee prostrate lie. 

2 Into thy presence let my prayer, 

With sighs devout, ascend; 
And to my cries, that ceaseless are, 
Thine ear with favour bend. 

3 For, cloyed with woes and trouble store, 

Surcharged my soul doth lie; 10 

My life, at death's uncheerful door, 
Unto the grave draws nigh. 

4 Reckoned I am with them that pass 

Down to the dismal pit; 

I am a 1 man but weak, alas ! 

And for that name unfit, 

5 From life discharged and parted quite 

Among the dead to sleep, 
And like the slain in bloody fight 
1 Heb. : A man without manly strength. 



That in the grave lie deep; 20 

Whom thou rememberest no more, 

Dost never more regard: 
Them, from thy hand delivered o'er, 

Death's hideous house hath barred. 

6 Thou, in the lowest pit profound, 

Hast set me all forlorn, 
Where thickest darkness hovers round, 
In horrid deeps to mourn. 

7 Thy wrath, from ivhich no shelter saves, 

Full sore doth press on me; 30 

1 Thou break'st upon me all thy waves, 
1 And all thy waves break me. 

8 Thou dost my friends from me estrange, 

And mak'st me odious, 
Me to them odious, for they change, 
And I here pent up thus. 

9 Through sorrow and affliction great 

Mine eye grows dim and dead; 
Lord, all the day I thee entreat, 

My hands to thee I spread. 40 

10 Wilt thou do wonders on the dead ? 

Shall the deceased arise 
And praise thee from their loathsome bed 
With pale and hollow eyes ? 

11 Shall they thy loving-kindness tell 

On whom the grave hath hold? 
Or they who in perdition dwell 
Thy faithfulness unfold f 

12 In darkness can thy mighty hand 

Or wondrous acts be known ? 50 

Thy justice in the gloomy land 
Of dark oblivion ? 

13 But I to thee, O Lord, do cry 

Ere yet my life be spent; 
And up to thee my prayer doth hie 
Each morn, and thee prevent. 

14 Why wilt thou, Lord, my soul forsake 

And hide thy face from me, 

15 That am already bruised, and 2 shake 

With terror sent from thee; 60 

Bruised and afflicted, and so low 

As ready to expire, 
While I thy terrors undergo, 

Astonished with thine ire ? 

16 Thy fierce wrath over me doth flow; 

Thy threatenings cut me through: 

17 All day they round about me go; 

Like waves they me pursue. 

18 Lover and friend thou hast removed, 

And severed from me far: 70 

They fly me now whom I have loved, 
And as in darkness are. 

1 The Hebrew bears both. 

2 Heb. : Prse concussione. 



TRANSLATIONS 



85 



PSALM I 

(1653) 

Blest is the man who hath not walked 

astray 
In counsel of the wicked, and i' the way 
Of sinners hath not stood, and in the seat 
Of scorners hath not sat; but in the great 
Jehovah's Law is ever his delight, 
And in his law he studies day and night. 
He shall be as a tree which planted grows 
By watery streams, and in his season 

knows 
To yield his fruit; and his leaf shall not 

fall; 
And what he takes in hand shall prosper 

all. 10 

Not so the wicked; but, as chaff which 

fanned 
The wind drives, so the wicked shall not 

stand 
In judgment, or abide their trial then, 
Nor sinners in the assembly of just men. 
For the Lord knows the upright way of the 

just, 
And the way of bad men to ruin must. 



PSALM II 

(August 8, 1653 — Terzetti) 

Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the na- 
tions 
Muse a vain thing, the kings of the earth 

upstand 
With power, and princes in their congre- 
gations 
Lay deep their plots together through each 
land 
Against the Lord and his Messiah dear ? 
"Let us break off," say they, "by 
strength of hand, 
Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to 
wear, 
Their twisted cords." He who in Hea- 
ven doth dwell 
Shall laugh; the Lord shall scoff them, 
then severe 
Speak to them in his wrath, and in his 
fell 
And fierce ire trouble them. " But I," 
saith he, 



" Anointed have my King (though ye 
rebel) 
On Sion my holy hill." A firm decree 
I will declare: the Lord to me hath said, 
" Thou art my Son ; I have begotten 
thee 
This day; ask of me, and the grant is 
made : 
As thy possession I on thee bestow 
The Heathen, and, as thy conquest to be 
swayed, 
Earth's utmost bounds: them shalt thou 
bring full low 
With iron sceptre bruised, and them dis- 
perse 20 
Like to a potter's vessel shivered so." 
And now be wise at length, ye kings 
averse ; 
Be taught, ye judges of the earth; with 

fear 
Jehovah serve, and let your joy converse 
With trembling; kiss the Son, lest he ap- 
pear 
In anger, and ye perish in the way, 
If once his wrath take fire, like fuel 
sere. 
Happy all those who have in him their stay. 



PSALM III 

(August 9, 1653) 

When he fled from Absalom 

Lord, how many are my foes ! 
How many those 
That in arms against me rise ! 

Many are they 
That of my life distrustfully thus say, 
" No help for him in God there lies." 
But thou, Lord, art my shield, my glory; 
Thee, through my story, 
The exalter of my head I count: 

Aloud I cried 10 

Unto Jehovah ; he full soon replied, 
And heard me from his holy mount. 
I lay and slept; I waked again: 
For my sustain 
Was the Lord. Of many millions 
The populous rout 
I fear not, though, encamping round about, 
They pitch against me their pavilions. 
Rise, Lord ; save me, my God ! for thou 
Hast smote ere now 20 

On the cheek-bone all my foes, 



86 POEMS DURING CIVIL WAR AND PROTECTORATE 



Of men abhorred 
Hast broke the teeth. This help was 
from the Lord; 
Thy blessing on thy people flows. 

PSALM IV 

{August 10, 1653) 

Answer me when I call, 

God of my righteousness; 

In straits and in distress 

Thou didst me disenthrall 

And set at large: now spare, 
Now pity me, and hear my earnest prayer. 

Great ones, how long will ye 

My glory have in scorn ? 

How long be thus forborne 

Still to love vanity ? ic 

To love, to seek, to prize 
Things false and vain, and nothing else but 
lies? 

Yet know the Lord hath chose, 

Chose to himself apart, 

The good and meek of heart 

(For whom to choose he knows) , 

Jehovah from on high 
Will hear my voice what time to him I cry. 

Be awed, and do not sin; 

Speak to your hearts alone 20 

Upon your beds, each one, 

And be at peace within. 

Offer the offerings just 
Of righteousness, and in Jehovah trust. 

Many there be that say 

" Who yet will show us good ? " 

Talking like this world's brood; 

But, Lord, thus let me pray: 

On us lift up the light, 
Lift up the favour, of thy count'nance 
bright. 30 

Into my heart more joy 

And gladness thou hast put 

Than when a year of glut 

Their stores doth over-cloy, 

And from their plenteous grounds 
With vast increase their corn and wine 
abounds. 

In peace at once will I 

Both lay me down and sleep; 

For thou alone dost keep 

Me safe where'er I lie: 40 

As in a rocky cell 
Thou, Lord, alone in safety mak'st me 
dwell. 



PSALM V 

{August 12, 1653) 

Jehovah, to my words give ear, 

My meditation weigh ; 
The voice of my complaining hear, 
My King and God, for unto thee I pray. 
Jehovah, thou my early voice 

Shalt in the morning hear; 
V the morning I to thee with choice 
Will rank my prayers, and watch till thou 
appear. 
For thou art not a God that takes 

In wickedness delight; 10 

Evil with thee no biding makes; 
Fools or mad men stand not within thy 
sight. 
All workers of iniquity 

Thou hat'st; and them unblest 
Thou wilt destroy that speak a lie; 
The bloody and guileful man doth God de- 
test. 
But I will in thy mercies dear, 
Thy numerous mercies, go 
Into thy house; I, in thy fear, 
Will towards thy holy temple worship 
low. 20 

Lord, lead me in thy righteousness, 

Lead me, because of those 
That do observe if I transgress; 
Set thy ways right before where my step 
goes. 
For in his faltering mouth unstable 

No word is firm or sooth; 
Their inside, troubles miserable; 
An open grave their throat, their tongue 
they smooth. 
God, find them guilty; let them fall 

By their own counsels quelled; 30 
Push them in their rebellions all 
Still on; for against thee they have re- 
belled. 
Then all who trust in thee shall bring 
Their joy, while thou from blame 
Defend'st them: they shall ever sing, 
And shall triumph in thee, who love thy 
name. 
For thou, Jehovah, wilt be found 

To bless the just man still: 
As with a shield thou wilt surround 
Him with thy lasting favour and good 
will. 40 



TRANSLATIONS 



87 



PSALM VI 

{August 13, 1653) 

Lord, in thy anger do not reprehend me, 
Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct; 
Pity me, Lord, for I am much deject, 
And very weak and faint; heal and amend 

me: 
For all my bones, that even with anguish 
ache, 
Are troubled; yea, my soul is troubled 

sore; 
And thou, Lord, how long? Turn, 
Lord; restore 
My soul; oh, save me, for thy goodness' 

sake ! 
For in death no remembrance is of thee; 
Who in the grave can celebrate thy 
praise ? 10 

Wearied I am with sighing out my days; 
Nightly my couch I make a kind of sea; 
My bed I water with my tears; mine eye 
Through grief consumes, is waxen old 

and dark 
I' the midst of all mine enemies that 
mark. 
Depart, all ye that work iniquity, 
Depart from me ; for the voice of my weep- 
ing 
The Lord hath heard; the Lord hath 

heard my prayer; 

My supplication with acceptance fair 

The Lord will own, and have me in his 

keeping. 20 

Mine enemies shall all be blank, and dashed 

With much confusion; then, grown red 

with shame, 
They shall return in haste the way they 
came, 
And in a moment shall be quite abashed. 



PSALM VII 

{August 14, 1653) 

Upon the words of Chush the Benjamite against 
him. 

Lord, my God, to thee I fly; 
Save me, and secure me under 
Thy protection while I cry; 
Lest, as a lion (and no wonder), 



He haste to tear my soul asunder, 
Tearing and no rescue nigh. 

Lord, my God, if I have thought 

Or done this; if wickedness 

Be in my hands; if I have wrought 

III to him that meant me peace; 10 

Or to him have rendered less, 

And not freed my foe for naught: 

Let the enemy pursue my soul, 
And overtake it; let him tread 
My life down to the earth, and roll 
In the dust my glory dead, 
In the dust, and there outspread 
Lodge it with dishonour foul. 

Rise, Jehovah, in thine ire; 

Rouse thyself amidst the rage 20 

Of my foes that urge like fire; 

And wake for me, their fury assuage ; 

Judgment here thou didst engage 

And command, which I desire. 

So the assemblies of each nation 
Will surround thee, seeking right: 
Thence to thy glorious habitation 
Return on high, and in their sight. 
Jehovah judgeth most upright 20 

All people from the world's foundation. 

Judge me, Lord; be judge in this 
According to my righteousness, 
And the innocence which is 
Upon me: cause at length to cease 
Of evil men the wickedness, 
And their power that doamiss. 

But the just establish fast, 

Since thou art the just God that tries 

Hearts and reins. On God is cast 

My defence, and in him lies; 40 

In him who, both just and wise, 

Saves the upright of heart at last. 

God is a just judge and severe, 
And God is every day offended; 
If the unjust will not forbear, 
His sword he whets; his bow hath bend- 
ed 
Already, and for him intended 
The tools of death that waits him near. 

(His arrows purposely made he 

For them that persecute.) Behold 50 



88 



POEMS DURING CIVIL WAR AND PROTECTORATE 



He travails big with vanity; 




To stint the enemy, and slack the avenger's 


Trouble he hath conceived of old 




brow, 


As in a womb, and from that mould 




That bends his rage thy providence to 


Hath at length brought forth a lie. 




oppose. 


He digg'd a pit, and delved it deep, 




When I behold thy heavens, thy fingers' art, 


And fell into the pit he made: 




The moon and stars, which thou so 


His mischief, that due course doth keep, 


bright hast set 10 


Turns on his head: and his ill trade 




In the pure firmament, then saith my heart, 


Of violence will undelayed 




Oh, what is man that thou rememberest 


Fall on his crown with ruin steep. 


60 


yet 
And think'st upon him, or of man begot 


Then will I Jehovah's praise 




That him thou visit'st, and of him art 


According to his justice raise, 




found ? 


And sing the Name and Deity 




Scarce to be less than gods thou mad'st his 


Of Jehovah the Most High. 




lot; 
With honour and with state thou hast 
him crowned. 


PSALM VIII 




O'er the works of thy hand thou mad'st 
him lord; 


{August 14, 1653) 




Thou hast put all under his lordly feet, 
All flocks and herds, by thy commanding 


Jehovah our Lord, how wondrous great 


word, 


And glorious is thy name through all the 


All beasts that in the field or forest 


earth, 




meet, 20 


So as above the heavens thy praise 


to 


Fowl of the heavens, and fish that through 


set! 




the wet 


Out of the tender mouths of latest bearth, 


Sea-paths in shoals do slide, and know 


Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings 


no dearth. 


thou 




Jehovah our Lord, how wondrous great 


Hast founded strength, because of 


all 


And glorious is thy name through all 


thy foes, 




the earth ! 



PARADISE LOST 

1658-1663 



PARADISE LOST 



In the Cambridge " Vacation Exercise " 
we get the first trace of the epic ambition 
forming in Milton's mind, where the young 
poet Jongs to sing 

" Of kings and queens and heroes old, 
Such as the wise Demodocus once told 
In solemn songs at king Alcinoiis feast." 

In the Latin verses, In Quintum Novembris, 
also, Professor Masson detects some em- 
bryons of Paradise Lost in those passages 
which have to do with the " personality 
and agency of Satan, and the physical con- 
nection between Hell and Man's world." 
Milton's naive confession to Diodati, at 
Horton, that he was "pluming his wings 
for a flight," meant doubtless some effort of 
a much more sustained sort than Lycidas, 
which immediately followed. But it was 
the unstinted praise which he received at 
the hands of the Italian academies, to- 
gether with his reading of Tasso, Ariosto, 
and Boiardo, which first set him seriously 
thinking of a poem of heroic dimensions. 

The first subject to which he gave much 
thought was the legendary history of King 
Arthur, as he explicitly states in the Latin 
poem to Manso, his Neapolitan host, and 
in the Epitaphium Damonis. The latter, 
written shortly after his return from abroad, 
informs us that he had decided to write in 
English, and that he had, indeed, already 
begun. One portion of this passage arouses 
interesting conjecture. He says, 

" I will not say what lofty strain my pipe 
was sounding — 't is now the twelfth day 
since — and perchance it was to new reeds 
that I had set my lips, when they burst 
their fastenings, and refused longer to en- 
dure the grave sounds." 



Whether the " new reeds " meant a new 
stanza, a new verse-line, the untried epic 
form, or the English language put to novel 
uses, it is certain that when burst they were 
thrown aside forever, so far as this particu- 
lar poem was concerned. 

Without definitely casting aside the sub- 
ject of King Arthur, Milton undertook, 
during the comparatively unemployed time 
between 1639-1642, a systematic course 
of reading in the Bible, in the chronicle- 
histories of Holinshed and Speed, and in 
the older chronicles of Bede, Geoffry of 
Monmouth, and William of Malmesbury, 
with the design of setting down all the 
hopeful subjects which occurred to him in 
perusal. These jottings have been pre- 
served to us among the Milton manuscripts 
in Trinity College, Cambridge. They con- 
sist of ninety-nine subjects, of which two 
thirds are from old and new testament 
Scripture, and the remainder from British 
history. For the most part the subjects 
are barely indicated, but in some cases pains 
have been taken to elaborate a little outline 
of treatment. Among these last, the sub- 
ject of the fall of Adam stands out con- 
spicuously; there are two outlines and two 
elaborated drafts of it, occupying in all 
nearly a page and a half of the seven pages 
of notes. All the drafts are for dramas; 
the possibility of epic treatment is not sug- 
gested. The first presents merely a list 
of dramatis persona;, — chief among which, 
after the human pair, are Michael and 
Lucifer: there is a chorus of angels and a 
number of allegorical figures, Heavenly 
Love, Conscience, Death, etc., introduced as 
" mutes." In the second draft Moses takes 
the place of Michael. The third is elabo- 
rated to show the course of the action and 



91 



9 2 



PARADISE LOST 



the division into acts. The fourth is of suf- 
ficient interest to be given entire: — 

"Adam Unparadised: — The Angel Ga- 
briel, either descending or entering — showing, 
since the globe is created, his frequency as 
much on Earth as in Heaven — describes Para- 
dise. Next the Chorus, showing the reason of 
his coming — to keep his watch, after Lucifer's 
rebellion, by the command of God — and withal 
expressing his desire to see and know more 
concerning this excellent and new creature, 
Man. The Angel Gabriel, as by his name sig- 
nifying a Prince of Power, passes by the sta- 
tion of the Chorus, and, desired by them, re- 
lates what he knew of Man, as the creation of 
Eve, with their love and marriage. — After 
this, Lucifer appears, after his overthrow ; be- 
moans himself ; seeks revenge upon Man. The 
Chorus prepares resistance at his first approach. 
At last, after discourse of enmity on either side, 
he departs ; whereat the Chorus sing of the 
battle and victory in Heaven against him and 
his accomplices, as before, after the first Act, 
was sung a hymn of the Creation. — Here again 
may appear Lucifer, relating and consulting 
on what he had done to the destruction of 
Man. Man next and Eve, having been by this 
time seduced by the Serpent, appear confusedly, 
covered with leaves. Conscience, in a shape, 
accuses him ; Justice cites him to the place 
whither Jehovah called for him. In the mean- 
time the Chorus entertains the stage and is in- 
formed by some Angel of the manner of the 
Fall. Here the Chorus bewails Adam's fall. — 
Adam and Eve return and accuse one another ; 
but especially Adam lays the blame to his wife 
— is stubborn in his offence. Justice appears, 
reasons with him, convinces him. The Chorus 
admonishes Adam, and bids him beware Luci- 
fer's example of impenitence. — The Angel is 
sent to banish them out of Paradise ; but, be- 
fore, causes to pass before his eyes, in shapes, a 
masque of all the evils of this life and world. 
He is humbled, relents, despairs. At last ap- 
pears Mercy, comforts him, promises him the 
Messiah ; then calls in Faith, Hope, Charity ; 
instructs him . He repents, gives God the glory, 
submits to his penalty. The Chorus briefly 
concludes. — Compare this with the former 
Draft." 

As will appear below, not only the idea 
of the dramatic form, but the specific 
handling here indicated, were beyond rea- 
sonable doubt suggested to Milton in Italy, 
where several dramas treating of the fall 



of Man, notably the Adamo of Andreini, 
can hardly have failed to fall under his 
notice. Though temporarily fascinated by 
these showy productions, he could not aban- 
don the epic form without long debate. 
The following passage from the Reason 
of Church Government, published in 1641, 
while this course of reading and pondering 
was still in progress, is interesting, aside 
from the nobility of its diction, as showing 
his hesitation : — 

" Time serves not now ... to give any 
certain account of what the mind at home, 
in the spacious circuit of her musings, hath 
liberty to propose to herself, though of 
highest hope and hardest attempting — 
whether that Epic form whereof the two 
poems of Homer and those other two of 
Virgil and Tasso are a diffuse, and the 
book of Job a brief model; . . . or whether 
those Dramatic constitutions wherein Soph- 
ocles and Euripides reign shall be found 
more doctrinal and exemplary to a nation." 

He balances, too, the idea of a national 
historical Epic over against that of a drama 
or pastoral play drawn from Holy Writ: — 

"As Tasso gave to the prince of Italy 
his choice whether he would command him 
to write of Godfrey's expedition against 
the infidels ... or Charlemagne against 
the Lombards, if to the instinct of nature 
and the emboldening of art aught may be 
trusted ... it haply would be no rashness, 
from an equal diligence and inclination, 
[for me] to present the like offer in our an- 
cient stories. . . . The Scripture also affords 
us a divine Pastoral Drama in the song of 
Solomon . . . and the Apocalypse of St. 
John is the majestic image of a high and 
stately Tragedy, shutting up and intermin- 
gling her solemn scenes and acts with a 
sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping 
symphonies." 

Whatever should be the subject and form 
selected, the selection was to be made 
from the point of view of the moral 
teacher. Milton is already determined to 
be the assertor of Eternal providence : — 



PARADISE LOST 



93 



"Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy 
and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave 
. . . with a solemn and treatable smooth- 
ness to paint out and describe; teaching 
over the whole book of sanctity and virtue, 
through all the instances of example, with 
such delight . . . that, whereas the paths of 
honesty and good life appear now rugged 
and difficult, though they be indeed easy 
and pleasant, they would then appear to all 
men both easy and pleasant, though they 
were rugged and difficult indeed." 

There is plainly apparent here the tem- 
per which would ultimately have decided 
Milton against a purely romantic theme, 
and in favor of that one among those 
drawn from the Bible, which was most in- 
stinct with ethical and religious doctrine, 
even if national circumstances had not 
thrown him more and more inevitably upon 
the subject of Satan's rebellion and revenge. 
Just when his decision was finally made, 
either as to subject or form, it is impossi- 
ble to say. We do know, on the authority 
of Edward Phillips, that as early as 1642 
Milton made a tentative beginning upon a 
drama such as had been indicated in his 
notes. Several verses which now form 
part of Satan's speech as he stands for 
the first time on earth and beholds the 
splendor of the sun in Heaven (Book IV, 
32-37) formed the opening lines of this in- 
cipient drama. The suppression of stage 
plays and closing of the theatres by Parlia- 
ment in 1642, and the great distrust of the 
drama felt by all Puritans, may have been 
instrumental in diverting Milton's inten- 
tion. The next positive information con- 
cerning the growth of Paradise Lost is 
Phillips's statement that his uncle began 
the composition of it in its present form 
"about two years before the king came 
in," i. e., about 1658, while he was still Crom- 
well's secretary. Its further progress, until 
it was shown to young Ellwood at Chalfont 
in 1665, has been traced, conjecturally, in 
the introductory biography. 

Two editions of Paradise Lost appeared 



in Milton's lifetime. In the first edition, 
1667, the poem appears in ten books; in 
the second, 1674, this number is increased 
to twelve by a division of the seventh and 
tenth books into two each. A third edition 
appeared in 1678. 



II 

It has been shown that the subject of 
Paradise Lost took tolerably definite shape 
in Milton's mind as early as 1641-2. Dur- 
ing the twenty odd years between this date 
and the completion of the poem, the theme 
lay in the background of his consciousness, 
accreting to itself a rich alluvium, slowly 
deposited from reading and reflection. A 
portion of the patience with which he bore 
the delay of his project was undoubtedly 
due to the necessity he felt for a long pre- 
paration. His poem was not one, he says 
in the Reasons of Church Government, " to 
be raised from the heat of youth or the 
vapors of wine, like that which flows at 
waste from the pen of some vulgar amo- 
rist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming para- 
site, nor to be obtained by the invocation of 
Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but 
by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit 
which can enrich with all utterance and 
knowledge, and sends out His Seraphim 
with the hallowed fire of His altars, to touch 
and purify the lips of whom He pleases. 
To this must be added industrious and se- 
lect reading, steady observation, insight into 
all seemly arts and affairs." The under- 
scored words are significant. During those 
years of preparation Milton travelled 
through an immense cycle of reading, con- 
stantly selecting and assimilating. The 
question of the " origins " of Paradise 
Lost is therefore a very complicated one, 
leading in a hundred unexpected directions, 
traversing indeed, in one form or another, 
nearly the whole area of European litera- 
ture. Of the thirty or forty works which 
have been cited by commentators, many, 
such as the Divine Weeks and Works of 



94 



PARADISE LOST 



Du Bartas, the Adamus Exul of Grotius, 
the Scena Tragica (V Adamo ed Eva of 
Lancetta, the Bellum Angelicum of Taub- 
mann, and the Sospetto d' Herode of Cra- 
shaw, we may put aside as exhibiting 
vague, slight, or merely verbal resem- 
blances. A few books, however, remain, 
which are so closely connected with Milton's 
work that some consideration of them is 
imperative. They are taken up here in 
the order in which Milton probably encoun- 
tered them. 

1. In 1627, while Milton was still at Cam- 
bridge, there was published a long poem 
in Latin entitled Locustce, and an English 
version of the same under the title of The 
Apollyonists. The author was Phineas 
Fletcher, a Cambridge man, better known 
as the author of The Purple Island. He 
was already a poet of considerable fame, 
especially in academic quarters, and his 
book could hardly have escaped falling into 
Milton's hands at once; nor can it have 
failed to make a strong impression, both 
because of its vigor and of its timely sub- 
ject. It deals with the origin and culmi- 
nation of the Gunpowder Plot, tracing the 
conspiracy to the newly-founded order of 
Jesuits, who are represented as urged on by 
infernal powers. The opening cantos nar- 
rate the gathering of the fallen angels in 
council, and their deliberations. The de- 
scription of the gathering, and the argu- 
ments put forth by the various chiefs in the 
course of debate, the final selection of 
Apollyon to be sent forth on the errand of 
guile, and the breaking up of the Satanic 
parliament, — all bear remarkable resem- 
blance to well-known passages in the open- 
ing books of Paradise Lost. The earlier 
picture placed beside the later is like some 
odd laborious German woodcut beside an 
altar-piece of Tintoretto; but the curious 
similarity of the main traits in each com- 
pels the belief that the impression made 
by Fletcher's poem upon Milton's mind at 
its most sensitive period emerged as a de- 
termining force in his imagination thirty 



years later, when he began to write his 
epic. The belief is strengthened by a 
similar correspondence between Paradise 
Regained and the Christ's Victory of Phineas 
Fletcher's brother Giles. The relations 
traceable between Paradise Lost and the 
Sospetto d' Herode of another Cambridge 
poet, Richard Crashaw, are, compared with 
those just mentioned, insignificant. 

2. Voltaire, while residing in England 
in 1727, stated positively, though without 
giving his authority, that Milton had seen 
at Florence a comedy called Adamo, by 
one Andreini, and that " piercing through 
the absurdity of that performance to the 
hidden majesty of the subject," he had 
taken "from that ridiculous trifle the first 
hint of the noblest work which human im- 
agination has ever attempted, and which he 
executed twenty years after." Voltaire 
could not have read the play in question, 
for it is neither a comedy nor a ridiculous 
trifle, but a sacred drama of no little dig- 
nity, in spite of some minor lapses in taste. 
It goes over the whole ground covered by 
Paradise Lost except the fall of the Angels 
and the creation of the world, which events 
have already taken place when the action 
opens. Two circumstances lend weight to 
the theory of Milton's indebtedness to An- 
dreini: the first is that after his return 
from Italy, when Andreini's play would 
have been still fresh in his mind, he pro- 
posed to treat the subject of Adam's fall 
in dramatic form, though he had thought 
only of the epic form for the Arthurian 
legends; the second is that in the early 
drafts of the proposed drama various alle- 
gorical personages appear, corresponding 
in some cases precisely to those profusely 
employed by Andreini, and so long before 
abandoned by serious dramatists in England 
that their presence in Milton's sketch points 
forcibly to an outside influence. 

3. The indebtedness of Milton to the 
Dutch poet Joost van den Vondel was in 
1885 investigated by Mr. George Edmund- 
son, whose conclusions are somewhat start- 



PARADISE LOST 



95 



ling. He points out the close acquaintance 
with the public affairs and even with some 
of the private gossip of the Low Countries, 
exhibited in Milton's pamphlets against 
Morus. He proves also that Milton was 
taught the Dutch language by Roger Wil- 
liams, during the visit of the latter to Eng- 
land in 1651-54. He then attempts to 
show by copious excerpts "not only that 
the language and imagery of the Lucifer " 
(the only work of Vondel referred to by 
previous critics) " exercised a powerful and 
abiding influence on the mind of Milton, 
and have left indelible traces upon the 
pages of Paradise Lost, but that other writ- 
ings of Vondel have affected in no less de- 
gree all the great poems of Milton's later 
life." These other writings are John the 
Baptist, published in 1661, believed by Mr. 
Edmundson to have influenced both Para- 
dise Lost and Paradise Regained ; Adam 
in Banishment, published in 1664, and offer- 
ing "remarkable coincidences with the 
ninth and tenth books, which were proba- 
bly written after its appearance;" Reflec- 
tions on God and Religion, a didactico-reli- 
gious poem, published in 1661, passages 
from which are " almost reproduced in 
portions of the eighth book of Paradise 
Lost ; " and Samson, a drama published in 
1660, which " exhibits all the features " of 
Samson Agonistes " which have been re- 
garded as most peculiar." A good deal 
must be deducted from all this on the 
score of pioneer enthusiasm, but after all 
deductions are made, the bulk of evidence 
remains considerable. 

Professor Masson discredits all investi- 
gation into the origins of Milton's poetry as 
futile, and " for the most part laborious 
nonsense." Surely, however, some good 
has been achieved in the process. In the 
first place we have arrived thereby at a far 
truer understanding of the texture of Mil- 
ton's mind and of its workings than would 
otherwise have been possible. It was per- 
haps the most extraordinarily assimilative 
mind in the history of poetry. In its ear- 



liest as well as its latest phases, it shows 
the same sensitiveness to literary impres- 
sion. Its richness is made up of a hundred 
borrowed dyes. As Shakespeare's mind 
held, as in a magic mirror, all the faces 
and forms of the world of men, Milton's 
held those of the world of books. The 
cases noted above are the chief ones in 
which an influence upon the large outlines 
of his work can be traced, but on every 
page, almost in every line, there is an 
echo of some earlier singer. In one sense 
Milton is the least original of poets. Over 
against his haughty independence as a man, 
we find in him as a poet a supple yielding 
to the fascination of voice or gesture in 
those to whom he listened. This is doubt- 
less the case with all poets in youth; Mil- 
ton is unique in having preserved to old 
age this instinct of eager assimilation. 

But if we left the case here, we should 
leave unstated the essential element of his 
power, — a mysterious element, which it is 
possible only to suggest by saying that with 
him the assimilation is complete. The bor- 
rowed particle is transmuted not only into 
a different thing, but always into a Miltonic 
thing ; and after such transmutation, it 
takes its place in the whole poetic struc- 
ture, not as something added but as some- 
thing organic. So that Paradise Lost, in 
spite of its immense freight of erudition, 
has a clean-limbed athletic movement very 
different — to go to the drama for a com- 
parison — from that of the Sejanus of Ben 
Jonson, in whose work a similar vastness 
of learning is scarcely assimilated at all. 

A second worthy outcome of investiga- 
tion into the sources of Paradise L,ost has 
been to reveal the fact that the subject 
had for a long time lain upon the imagi- 
nations of poets throughout Europe with a 
kind of obsession. In the first half of the 
seventeenth century at least a score of 
serious efforts were made, in Italy, Spain, 
France, the Low Countries, and even in 
Germany, to grapple in verse with the pro- 
blem of the origin of evil as set forth in 



96 



PARADISE LOST 



Genesis. The figures of Adam and Eve, 
Lucifer and Michael, had exerted over the 
poets a fascination which was in part picto- 
rial, in part due to the religious question- 
ing of the age. With most of these works 
Milton was doubtless familiar, and he was 
acting according to true epic tradition when 
he gathered into a work of commanding 
scope and unity the detached attempts of 
his predecessors. In this restricted but 
still significant sense, Paradise Lost is a 
" natural epic," with a law of growth like 
that of Beowulf, or the Iliad. 



Ill 



Paradise Lost is eminently a cosmologi- 
cal poem, and demands on the part of the 
reader a clear visualization of the scheme 
of the universe which it presupposes. This 
scheme is so remote from our present con- 
ception that a few words of explanation or 
reminder may be called for. 

In spite of the announcement by Coper- 
nicus, a century before Milton began to 
consider his subject, of the true physical 
order, and in spite of the work of Kepler 
and Galileo, establishing the theory on a 
secure basis, the new astronomy had made, 
by the middle of the seventeenth century, 
little progress toward supplanting the old 
Ptolemaic system which had held its place 
since the first century of the Christian era. 
This old system, discarded by a few ad- 
vanced scientific minds, still furnished the 
cosmologic outline for the world's thought, 
and was endeared to men's minds by a 
thousand associations of poetry and reli- 
gion. Whether for such reasons or be- 
cause of his own skepticism concerning the 
new theory, Milton cast his poem into the 
traditional mould, making, however, some 
important reservations and changes. 

The fundamental difference between the 
Ptolemaic and the Copernican system is 
that in the old one the earth, not the sun, 
was made the centre about which all other 
bodies revolve. These other bodies, more- 



over, instead of moving freely through 
space, held in leash only by the force of 
gravitation (or, as was at first believed, by 
magnetic attraction), were conceived of as 
firmly fastened in concentric spheres or 
shells of some indeterminate transparent 
material, which shells moved upon one an- 
other in such a way as to bring about the 
bewildering irregularities noticeable in the 
movements of the bodies they carried. The 
order of these spheres was, beginning with 
the one nearest the earth, immediately sur- 
rounding the terrestrial air-belt : — first, 
the sphere of the Moon; second, the sphere 
of Mercury ; third, the sphere of Venus ; 
fourth, the sphere of the Sun ; fifth, the 
sphere of Mars ; sixth, the sphere of Jupi- 
ter ; seventh, the sphere of Saturn ; eighth, 
the sphere of the Fixed Stars. This eighth 
sphere was known as the Firmament, be- 
cause of its supposed function of steadying 
the more volatile spheres within. Accord- 
ing to the original Ptolemaic scheme, this 
eighth sphere formed the outside limit of 
the created universe, — the Mundus or 
Macrocosm; but later speculation added a 
ninth, called the Crystalline, to account 
for the precession of the equinoxes, and a 
tenth, called the Primum Mobile, or " First- 
moved." This last sphere, unlike the others, 
was conceived of as solid and non-trans- 
parent. It carried along by its momentum 
the spheres within, in their various revolu- 
tions; and it served, conveniently for the 
finite imagination, as a sort of necessary 
containing envelope for the whole. 

Thus far, Milton's conception is identi- 
cal with that of the mediaeval cosmologists. 
In his account of the creation (Book VII., 
192-550) he does not, it is true, take ac- 
count of the Ptolemaic spheres, perhaps 
because of the wavering state of his be- 
lief in them, but more probably because 
of his desire to keep close to the Biblical 
account. But elsewhere (Book III.;, 481- 
483) he makes clear his adoption of the 
traditional belief concerning them. As to 
what lay outside the Primum Mobile, 



PARADISE LOST 



97 



however, Paradise Lost makes some inno- 
vations. The mediaeval belief had been 
that through this outside region, of infinite 
extent, spread the radiant Empyrean, or 
Heaven of Heavens, the mysterious seat of 
the God-head, and the pinnacle (to use a 
term of one dimension) of that graduated 
hierarchy of heavens of which the sphere 
of the Moon was the lowest, and in all 
which dwelt angelic presences. Before 
Milton's day, this conception of Heaven as 
including the ten spheres of the Mundus 
or material universe, had become at least 
obsolescent ; and Heaven had been trans- 
ferred, in most minds, entirely to the mys- 
tical realm which spread beyond the en- 
velope of the Primum Mobile, — in other 
words, it had been made identical with the 
Empyrean, till then set apart as the crown 
and culmination of the heavenly orbs. But 
as it was extremely difficult to picture 
Heaven thus as a sphere, enveloping the 
material universe on all sides, a further 
contraction naturally followed, and Heaven 
came to be thought of as " above," that is, 
as situated in the zenith-portion, humanly 
speaking, of extra-cosmic infinitude. 

This naive popular conception Milton 
followed, and made even more picturesque 
and tangible. He is careful to say that 
wherever he speaks of heavenly things con- 
cretely, it is always as symbols that they 
are to be understood ; but this is only a 
theologian's apology. As poet, his busi- 
ness was with concretions, and he took 
pains at every point to make the setting of 
his drama optically rememberable. Hea- 
ven he represents as a place of radiance 
in the " zenith portion " of infinite space, 
separated by walls and towers of light 
from Chaos, a dark amorphous region of 
warring elements beneath. Before the fall 
of the rebellious angels and before the cre- 
ation of the Mundus, or world of Earth 
and its enveloping spheres, Chaos occupied 
all this lower portion of infinitude; but 
afr jr those events, Hell was hollowed out 
iti the nadir portion of Chaos to receive the 



defeated armies of Lucifer; and the Earth 
with her enveloping spheres was also cre- 
ated out of Chaos to receive Man, the in- 
heritor of the divine affection forfeited by 
the rebel angels at their fall. 

Not content with even so tangible a divi- 
sion of space as this, Milton makes unmis- 
takable the relative positions of Heaven, 
the Universe, and Hell, as well as telling 
us something of their comparative sizes 
and distances. The Universe hangs by 
a golden chain from the floor of Heaven, 
or rather from its brink, — for of course, 
for purposes of visualization, a length and 
breadth limit must be set to the region. 
When Satan far off in Chaos catches sight 
of the world-ball hanging thus from the 
luminous stretch of Heaven, he likens it 
to " a star of smallest magnitude close by 
the moon." Hell, we are further told, is 
situated three times as far from Heaven as 
the centre of the earth is distant from the 
Primum Mobile, or, in other words, three 
semi-diameters of the world-ball beneath 
Heaven, and nearly one semi-diameter be- 
neath that ball itself. To complete the 
" stage-setting " of the action, we must add 
a few details. A ladder of light reaches 
downward from the gate of Heaven to an 
opening directly beneath in the Primum 
Mobile; this ladder constitutes the regu- 
lar means of communication between God 
and his World, and can be raised at will 
when not needed by his angelic messengers. 
After the temptation and fall of Adam, a 
corresponding means of communication be- 
tween Hell and the Universe comes into 
existence in the shape of a bridge built by 
Sin and Death across the dark and warring 
abyss of Chaos. If we will push the visual 
image to its last point of exactness, we 
must conceive this bridge stretching from 
Hell-gate upward to a point on the outer 
surface of the Primum Mobile near the 
foot of the heavenly ladder, since there 
alone is ingress afforded into the spheres 
which encircle the earth. 

The extreme exactness of Milton's delin- 



9 8 



PARADISE LOST 



eation tempts one to an ungenerous urging 
of discrepancies. How, one may ask, is 
the idea of the ladder and the chain to be 
reconciled with the idea of the revolving 
motion of the world-spheres? And how, 
if the outer shell of the Universe is non- 
transparent, can Satan liken it to a star 
hanging by the moon ? Of course this is 
to inquire too curiously. For the purposes 
of his action the delineation is consistent 
enough, and although to our minds, accus- 
tomed to the spacial immensities and har- 
monious physical law which the modern 
astronomy has demonstrated, Milton's cos- 
mology seems, when thus stripped to its 
skeleton, curiously arbitrary and wooden, 
his handling makes it august enough. 

The question remains an interesting one 
whether Milton still held as true the Ptole- 
maic astronomy, or whether he adopted it 
because of its hold on the popular imagi- 
nation and its adaptability to poetic treat- 
ment. A famous passage in the poem 
(Book VIIL, 15-178) seems to betray a 
wavering state of mind, a distrust of the 
new system coupled with dissatisfaction 
over the arbitrariness and complexities of 
the old. We should have expected Milton, 
with his intellectual daring, his radical 
temper, and his virile imagination, to be 
the first to welcome the new theories, espe- 
cially after his meeting with Galileo in 
Italy. But he was held back by the most 
powerful of checks. The whole passion of 
Puritanism went to dignify the individual, 
to place man face to face with his Creator, 
and to make his salvation or damnation 
the Almighty's chief concern. The degra- 
dation of the earth from its proud station 
immovable at the centre of ten ministrant 
spheres, to the position of an insignificant 
satellite of the sun, would have seemed to 
belittle Man, to deny his spiritual preroga- 
tive. This aspect of the new cosmology 
could not but make it peculiarly repellent 
to a mind like Milton's, in which the Pu- 
ritan conception of human dignity and 
responsibility was unusually stern. It is 



probable that he shut his mind more or less 
deliberately to the rational appeal of the 
Copernican theory. 

We cannot be sorry that he did so. The 
lack of definite outline in the new cosmo- 
logy would have rendered it difficult for 
concrete treatment, even if it had been pos- 
sible for the poet to assimilate suddenly 
ideas involving such a complete restate- 
ment of his thought-world. In reading the 
poem, there are two things which a reader 
has to do, — first, to visualize in all its 
concreteness the picture of Heaven, Hell, 
Chaos, and the Universe, as the poet has 
given them physical embodiment; second, 
to accept his reservation that these are 
pictures merely, symbols made tangible 
to human sense, of mysteries which are 
spiritual. 

IV 

It was in Italy, as we have seen, that 
Milton's vague literary ambitions crystal- 
lized, and it was the Italian heroic poems 
which turned his thoughts toward the epic 
form. The influence of the romantic po- 
etry of the south came to him while he was 
still in the Elizabethan mood, and, reinfor- 
cing as it did the glamour of Spenser with 
the spell of Italian syllables, sank so deeply 
into his mind that it lingered on after the 
native romance of his temperament had 
evaporated. It is curious to see how re- 
collections of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso 
throw even across the umber and gray of 
Paradise Regained purpureal illuminations, 
the unexpectedness and incongruity of 
which are almost ghostly. The epic sub- 
ject which he determined upon while in 
Italy, the adventures of King Arthur and 
his knights, was perhaps the nearest paral- 
lel in British legend to the themes which 
these poets had treated, though its greater 
ethical possibilities made a special appeal 
to Milton's nature. He rejected, in the 
end, this purely romantic material, but he 
did not reject the romantic manner of 
treatment learned in the southern school. 



PARADISE LOST 



99 



Paradise Lost is the last great episode in 
the movement of imagination of which 
Ariosto and Tasso in Italy, Camoens in 
Portugal, and Spenser in England, are ex- 
emplars. With one of these, indeed, Cam- 
oens, Milton stands in a peculiarly inter- 
esting relation. The Lusiad of Camoens 
treats of the voyages of the famous Portu- 
guese navigators ; its theme, therefore, is 
taken from recent, almost contemporary, 
history. This theme, however, is treated, 
one may say, centrif ugally, the imagination 
of the poet circling out in such a way as 
to invest it with all manner of religious 
and mythopceic suggestion. Milton, on the 
other hand, starting with a great religious 
and mythic theme, impressed upon it, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, the traits of the 
Puritan revolution in England. 

For not only are the theology of the 
poem and its doctrine of social relations 
entirely Puritan, but, as has often been 
remarked, its chief figure and real hero, 
Lucifer, is an embodiment of that very 
spirit of revolt against arbitrary authority 
which swept Charles I. from the throne. 
Roughly speaking, Satan is an unsuccess- 
ful Cromwell, refusing to bow before the 
tyranny of irresponsible might, and Jeho- 
vah is a triumphant Stuart, robed in the 
white light of omnipotence. The theology 
and the politics of the poet are at vari- 
ance, and this fact introduces into much of 
the poem an unconscious insincerity. The 
words of the rebel angel have an intense 
eloquence, and the account of his doings 
and of his domain a persuasive vividness 
and majesty, which contrasts oddly with 
the pedantic woodenness of many of the 
passages consecrated to the Deity. It was 
largely in the attempt to overcome this 
paradox by which his villain insisted upon 
being his hero, that Milton lost himself in 
those long disquisitions that make some of 
the later books of the poem rather dreary 
reading. 

Perhaps another fact contributing to the 
same result was that the writing of Para- 

LofC. 



dise Lost was, as Taine suggests, really a 
feat of anachronism. Milton was produ- 
cing a cosmology in an age of psychology. 
The whole tendency of Puritanism had been 
to make men look within, to fix attention 
upon the individual spirit and its respon- 
sibilities ; Bunyan's Grace Abounding was 
therefore the significant book for the times, 
significant, at least, for one half the nation ; 
the other half was drifting fast toward the 
spirit of pure criticism. It is not strange, 
under these conditions, that Milton felt a 
constant temptation to abandon the picture 
for the sermon. His solemnly avowed 
intention to "justify the ways of God to 
men " was in the end a serious drag upon 
him. 

There lurked in the subject another dif- 
ficulty. The title Paradise Lost, although 
it suggests the central point about which 
the action moves, does not adequately sug- 
gest that action itself. The fall of man 
from innocence is only the point of con- 
vergence for a cosmic drama, the theatre 
of which is all space, and the time of 
which extends far back into the abyss be- 
fore Time was. In this unimaginable 
vastness the earth hangs a mere drop, and 
the little drama of the Garden of Paradise 
dwindles necessarily almost into insignifi- 
cance. Milton was never able to over- 
come this fault of perspective ; however 
much he lingers over the human pair he is 
never able to centre our interest there. It 
is as if our eyes, accustomed to the glooms 
of Hell and the glories of Heaven, had 
lost their power to see the temperate small 
sights of earth with keenness. 

When all deductions are made, however, 
Paradise Lost remains for us one of the 
greatest of poems. With the exception of 
Beowulf, which by its language and sub- 
ject lies remote from our every-day ap- 
preciation, it is the only English poem with 
sufficient largeness of theme and breadth 
of treatment to deserve the name of epic. 
It is of course not an epic of the Homeric 
type, springing spontaneously in an unlet- 



IOO 



PARADISE LOST 



tered age from the imaginative life of a 
whole nation; but granted the age of so- 
phistication in which it was produced, it 
did in a remarkable way seize and draw 
together the imaginative elements of Eng- 
lish thought. The Bible was in Milton's 
day the very centre and substance of that 
thought. It was for many years almost the 
only book accessible to the nation at large, 
and that too at a time when intellectual 
curiosity was profoundly stirred by the im- 
pulses of the Renaissance. The stories of 
the Bible, its cosmogony, its chronology, its 
imagery, had sunk into the tissue of English 
thought like a rich and sombre dye. When 
Milton adopted the story of Genesis as his 
subject, he was seizing with true epic in- 
stinct upon material genuinely national, 
— much more national than the story of 
King Arthur or any of the historical British 
kings could have been, because not only 
the belief but the passion of the race was 
engaged by it. 

Unfortunately for one part of Milton's 
appeal, the fabric upon which he wrought 
had in it elements of decay of which no one 
of his generation, and he least of all, had 
an inkling. As we have come to appre- 
hend more clearly the essentials of reli- 
gious truth as distinguished from its acci- 
dental outlines, one great hold which the 
poem had over the minds of readers has 
failed. 

But in this case "less is more." Our 
fathers saw in Paradise Lost a system of 
irrefragable truth such as we cannot see, 
but as a consequence of this falling away 
of the veil of dogma, we see in it qualities 
of beauty which escaped their pious gaze. 
No crash of systems can drown its noble 
music, and the fading away of dogma 
leaves the splendor of its symbolism only 
the more essentially worthy of regard. 
Then, too, as we get farther away from the 
conditions which gave the poem birth, its 
human meaning takes on a pathos which 
the very sternness of their belief prevented 
our forefathers from seeing. 



It is style, both in the broad and in the 
narrow sense, which gives Paradise Lost 
its surest claim to enduring admiration. 
Everywhere there is an indefinable distinc- 
tion of thought and image; the imagina- 
tion speaks with a divine largeness of idiom. 
Or if not quite everywhere, — if Christ's 
marking off of the creation with golden 
compasses, if the description of Sin and 
Death as guardians of the gates of Hell, 
if the cannonading of the celestial armies 
in Heaven, are instances of unplastic im- 
agination, — these exceptions serve only to 
throw into relief a myriad other pictures 
of commanding vitality and splendor. It 
is questionable whether any other poem ex- 
cept the Divine Comedy affords so many 
unforgettable pictures. Milton's blindness, 
which at first thought might be deemed 
crushingly against him here, really helped 
him. Cut off forever from the light of 
the sun, he turned his imagination passion- 
ately in upon the memories of color and 
form which he had carried with him into 
darkness, and took delight in giving to the 
obscure shades of hell and the vague glo- 
ries of heaven a startling concreteness and 
actuality. And these pictures, almost 
without exception, possess a quality very 
rare in the history of imagination, a quality 
which can only be hinted at by the abused 
epithet "sublime." Even the pictures of 
Dante, placed beside them, have an ever}'- 
day colloquial look. Milton's all " dilated 
stand like Teneriffe or Atlas." De Quincey 
was right in declaring that the pervading 
presence of this quality gives Paradise 
Lost its unique worth, and makes of it a 
work which, if lost, could not be guessed 
at from the work of other minds. And to 
match this quality in the manner of thought 
there is everywhere present a correspond- 
ing quality of expression, a diction and a 
rhythm so large that they seem made for 
more than mortal lips to tell of more than 
earthly happenings, yet so harmoniously 
adjusted to their task that their largeness is 
felt less than their justice. William Blake, 



ON PARADISE LOST 



in one of his prophetical books, says that 
Milton's house in the Spiritual Kingdom is 
Palladian, not Gothic. Palladian it is, and 
in this century we have dwelt by preference 
in the Gothic house of mind, loving the 



wayward humor of its adornment, the mys- 
ticism and confusion of its design. But 
from time to time we must purify our vision 
with the more ample and august lines of 
the house which Milton has builded. 



ON PARADISE LOST 

[prefixed to the second edition] 

When I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold, 
In slender book his vast design unfold — 
Messiah crowned, God's reconciled decree, 
Rebelling Angels, the Forbidden Tree, 
Heaven, Hell, Earth, Chaos, All — the ar- 
gument 
Held me a while misdoubting his intent, 
That he would ruin (for I saw him strong) 
The sacred truths to fable and old song 
(So Samson groped the temple's posts in 

spite), 
The world o'erwhelming to revenge his 
sight. 
Yet, as I read, soon growing less severe, 
I liked his project, the success did fear — 
Through that wide field how he his way 

should find 
O'er which lame Faith leads Understanding 

blind; 
Lest he perplexed the things he would ex- 
plain, 
And what was easy he should render 
vain. 
Or, if a work so infinite he spanned, 
Jealous I was that some less skilful hand 
(Such as disquiet always what is well, 
And by ill-imitating would excel,) 
Might hence presume the whole Creation's 

day 
To change in scenes, and show it in a 
play. 
Pardon me, mighty Poet; nor despise 
My causeless, yet not impious, surmise. 
But I am now convinced, and none will 

dare 
Within thy labours to pretend a share. 



Thou hast not missed one thought that 

could be fit, 
And all that was improper dost omit; 
So that no room is here for writers left, 
But to detect their ignorance or theft. 
The majesty which through thy work 

doth reign 
Draws the devout, deterring the profane. 
And things divine thou treat'st of in such 

state 
As them preserves, and thee, inviolate. 
At once delight and horror on us seize; 
Thou sing'st with so much gravity and ease, 
And above human flight dost soar aloft 
With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft. 
The bird named from the Paradise you sing 
So never flags, but always keeps on wing. 
Where could'st thou words of such a 

compass find ? 
Whence furnish such a vast expense of 

mind ? 
Just Heaven, thee like Tiresias to requite, 
Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight. 
Well might'st thou scorn thy readers to 

allure 
With tinkling rime, of thy own sense se- 
cure; 
While the Town-Bayes writes all the while 

and spells, 
And, like a pack-horse, tires without his 

bells. 
Their fancies like our bushy points appear; 
The poets tag them, we for fashion wear. 
I too, transported by the mode, offend, 
And, while I meant to praise thee, must 

commend. 
Thy verse, created, like thy theme sublime, 
In number, weight, and measure, needs 

not rime. 

Andrew Marvell. 



PARADISE LOST 



THE VERSE 

The measure is English heroic verse without rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil 
in Latin — rime being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer 
works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame 
metre ; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, 
but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, 
and for the most part worse, than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause 
therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rime both in longer 
and shorter works, as have also long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself, to 
all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight ; which consists only in apt numbers, fit 
quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the 
jingling sound of like endings — a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all 
good oratory. This neglect then of rime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may 
seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in 
English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage 
of riming. 



BOOK I 



THE ARGUMENT 

This First Book proposes, first in brief,' the whole 
subject — Man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon 
of Paradise, wherein he was placed : then touches the 
prime cause of his fall — the Serpent, or rather Satan 
in the Serpent ; who, revolting from God, and drawing 
to his side many legions of ^Angels, was, by the com- 
mand of God, driven out of Heaven, with all his crew, 
into the great Deep. Which action passed over, the 
Poem hastes into the midst of things ; presenting Sa- 
tan, with his Angels, now fallen into Hell — described 
here not in the Centre (for heaven and earth may be 
supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed), 
but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos. 
Here Satan, with his Angels lying on the burning lake, 
thunderstruck and astonished, after a certain space re- 
covers, as from confusion ; calls up him who, next in 
order and dignity, lay by him : they confer of their 
miserable fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay 
till then in the same manner confounded. They rise : 
their numbers ; array of battle ; their chief leaders 
named, according to the idols known afterwards in Ca- 
naan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan di- 
rects his speech ; comforts them with hope yet of re- 
gaining Heaven ; but tells them, lastly, of a new world 
and new kind of creature to be created, according to 
an ancient prophecy, or report, in Heaven — for that 
Angels were long before this visible creation was the 
opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the 
truth of this prophecy, and Iwhat to determine thereon, 
he refers to a full council. What his associates thence 
attempt. Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises, 
suddenly built - out of the Deep : the infernal Peers 
there sit in council. 

j Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste 
Brought death into the World, and all our. 

woe, 
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man 
V^gestore us, and regain the blissful Seat, 
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret 

top 
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire 



That Shepherd who first taught the chosen 

seed 
In the beginning how the heavens and earth 
Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill 10 

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that 

flowed 
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence 
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous song, 
That with no middle flight intends to soar 
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues 
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme*^ 
And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost pre- 
fer 
Before all temples the upright heart and 

pure, 
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from 

the first 
Wast present, and, with mighty wings out- 
spread, 20 
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss, 
And macUst it pregnant: what in me is 

dark 
Illumine, what is low raise and support; 
That, to the highth of this great argument, 
I may assert Eternal Providence, 
And justify the ways of God to men. 

Say first — for Heaven hides nothing 
from thy view, 
Nor the deep tract of Hell — say first what 

cause 
Moved our grand Parents, in that happy 

state, 
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off 30 
From their Creator, and transgress his will 
For one restraint, lords of the World be- 
sides. 
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt ? 






BOOK FIRST 



103 



J The infernal Serpent; he it was whose 

guile, 
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived 
The mother of mankind, what time his 

pride 
Had cast him out from Heaven, with, all 

his host 
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring 
To set himself in glory above his peers, 
He trusted to have equalled the Most 

High, _ .40 

If he opposed, and, with ambitious aim 
Against the throne and monarchy of God, 
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle 

proud, 
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty 

Power 
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal 

sky, 
With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell 
In adamantine chains and penal fire, 
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms. 
Nine times the 1 space that measures day 

and night 50 

To mortal men. he, with his horrid crew, 
Lay vanquished, rowling in the fiery gulf, 
Confounded, though immortal. But his 

doom 
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the 

thought 
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain 
Torments him: round he throws his baleful 

eyes, 
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay, 
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast 

hate. 
At once, as far as Angel's ken, he views 
The dismal situation waste and wild. 60 
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, 
As one great furnace flamed; yet from 

those flames 
No light; but rather darkness visible 
Served onely to discover sights of woe, 
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where 

peace 
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes 
That comes to all, but torture without end 
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed 
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed. 
Such place Eternal Justice had prepared 
For those rebellious; here their prison or- 
dained 7 i 
In utter darkness, and their portion set, 



As far removed from God and light of 
Heaven 

As from the centre thrice to the utmost 
pole. 

Oh how unlike the place from whence they 
fell! 

There the companions of his fall, o'er- 
whelmed 

With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous 
fire, 

He soon discerns; and, weltering by his 
side, 

One next himself in power, and next in 
crime, 79 

Long after known in Palestine, and named 

Beelzebub. To whom the Arch-Enemy, 

And thence in Heaven called Satan, with 
bold words 

Breaking the horrid silence, thus began: — 
" If thou beest he — but Oh how fallen ! 
how changed 

From him ! — who, in the happy realms of 
light, 

Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst 
outshine 

Myriads, though bright — if he whom mu- 
tual league, 

United thoughts and counsels, equal hope 

And hazard in the glorious enterprise, 

Joined with me once, now misery hath 
joined 90 

In equal ruin; into what pit thou seest 

From what highth fallen: so much the 
stronger proved 

He with his thunder: and till then who 
knew 

The force of those dire arms ? Yet not for 
those, 

Nor what the potent Victor in his rage 

Can else inflict, dd I repent, or change, 

Though changed in outward lustre, that 
fixed mind, 

And high disdain from sense of injured 
merit, 

That with the Mightiest raised me to con- 
tend, 

And to the fierce contention brought 
along 100 

Innumerable force of Spirits armed, 

That durst dislike his reign, and, me pre- 
ferring, 

His utmost power with adverse power op- 
posed 

In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven, 



104 



PARADISE LOST 



And shook his throne. What though the I 
field be lost ? rt^A*W*U A " t. f» 

All is not lost — the unconquerable will, 
And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
And courage never to submit or yield: 
And what is else not to be overcome. 109 
That glory never shall his wrath or might 
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace 
ith suppliant knee, and deify his power 
ho, from the terror of this arm, so late 
Doubted his empire — that were low in- 
deed; 
That were an ignominy and shame beneath 
This downfall; since, by fate, the strength 

of Gods, 
And this empyreal substance, cannot fail; 
Since, through experience of this great 

event, 
In arms not worse, in foresight much ad- 
vanced, 
We may with more successful hope re- 
solve ; > I \^jx I2 ° 
To wage by force or guile eternal war, 
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe, 
Who now triumphs', and in the excess of 

joy 

Sole reigning holds the tyranny of 
Heaven." 
So spake the apostate Angel, though in 
pain, 
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep de- 
spair; 
And him thus answered soon his bold Com- 
peer: — 
"O Prince, O Chief of many throned 
Powers 
That led the imbattled Seraphim to war 
Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful 
deeds 130 

Fearless, endangered Heaven's perpetual 

King, 
And put to proof his high supremacy, 
Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or 

fate ! 
Too well I see and rue the dire event 
That, with sad overthrow and foul defeat, 
Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty 

host 
In horrible destruction laid thus low, 
As far as Gods and Heavenly Essences 
Can perish: for the mind and spirit re- 
mains 
Invincible, and vigour soon returns, 140 

Though all our glory extinct, and happy 
state 



Here swallowed up in endless misery, 
^uf what if He our Conqueror (whom 1 1 

now 
Of force believe almighty, since no less 
Than such could have o'erpowered such r 

force as ours) 
Have left us this our spirit and strength 

entire, 
Strongly to suffer and support our pains, 
That we may so suffice iiis vengeful ire, 
Or do him mightier service as his thralls 
By right of war, whate'er his business be, 150 
Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire, 
Or do his errands in the gloomy Deep ? 
What can it then avail though yet we feel ™ 
Strength undiminished, or eternal being 
To undergo eternal punishment ? " 

Whereto with speedy words the Arch- 

Fiend replied: — 
" Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable, 
Doing or suffering: but of this be sure — +■ 
To do aught good never will be our task,\ 
But ever to do ill our sole delight, 160 

As being the contrary to His high will 
Whom we resist. If then his providence 
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, 
Our labour must be to pervert that end, 
And out of good still to find means of evil ; 
Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps 
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb 
His inmost counsels from their destined 

aim. 
But see ! the angry Victor hath recalled 
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit 170 
Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphu- 
rous hail, 
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid 
The fiery surge that from the precipice 
Of Heaven received us falling; and the 

thunder, 
Winged with red lightning and impetuous 

rage, 
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases 

now 
To bellow through the vast and boundless 

Deep. 
Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn 
Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe. 
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and 

wild, 180 

The seat of desolation, void of light, 
Save what the glimmering of these livid 

flames 
Casts pale and dreadful ? Thither let us 

tend 



j^a^ L 



BOOK FIRST 



107 



From off the tossing of these fiery waves ; 
There rest, if any rest can harbour there;-— 
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers, 
Consult how we may henceforth most of- 
tf» fend 

* Our Enemy, our own loss how repair, 
How overcome this dire calamity, 
What reinforcement we may gain from 

hope, 190 

If not what resolution from despair." 

Thus Satan, talking to his nearest Mate, 
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes 
That sparkling blazed ; his other parts be- 
sides 
Prone on the flood, extended long and 

large, 
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge 
As whom the fables name of monstrous size, 
Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on 

Jove, 
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den 
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast 200 
Leviathan, which God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream. v 
Him, haply slumbering on the Norway 

foam, 
The pilot of some small night-foundered 

skiff, 
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, 
Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. 
So stretched out huge in length the Arch- 

Fiend lay, 
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever 

thence 210 

Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the 

will 
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven 
Left him at large to his own dark designs, ! 
That with reiterated crimes he might 
v — Heap on himself damnation, while he sought 
Evil to others, and enraged might see 
How all his malice served but to bring 

forth 
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn 
On Man by him seduced, but on himself 
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance 

poured. 220 

Forthwith upright he rears from off the 
pool 
His mighty stature; on each hand the 

flames 
Driven backward slope their pointing spires, 
and, rowled 



In billows, leave i' the midst a horrid vax 
Then with expanded wings he steers his 

flight 
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air, 
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land 
He lights — if it were land that ever burned 
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire, 
And such appeared in hue as when the 

force 230 

Of subterranean wind transports a hill 
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side 
Of thundering iEtna, whose combustible 
And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire, 
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, 
And leave a singed bottom all involved 
With stench and smoke. Such resting found' 

the sole 
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next 

Mate; 
Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian 

flood 
As gods, and by their own recovered 

strength, 240 

Not by the sufferance of supernal power. 
" Is this the region, this the soil, the 

clime," 
Said then the lost Archangel, " this the seat 
That we must change for Heaven ? — this 

mournful gloom 
For that celestial light ? Be it so, since 

He * 

Who now is sovran can dispose and bid 
What shall be right: fardest from Him is 

best, 
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath 

made supreme 
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, 
Where joy for ever dwells ! Hail, horrors ! 

hail, 2 5o 

Infernal World ! and thou, profoundest 

Hell, 
Receive thy new possessor — one who 

brings 
A mind not to be changed by place or time. 
The mind is its own place, and in itself * 

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of^ 

Heaven. 
What matter where, if I be still the same, 
And what I should be, all but less than he 
Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here 

at least 
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not 

built 
Here for his envy, will not drive us 

hence : 26 ° 






104 



PARADISE LOST 



Ar 

.ere 



reign 



secure: and, in 



my 



we may 
i choice, 

To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell : 
Better to reign in Hell than serve in 

Heaven. 
But wherefore let we then our faithful 

friends, 
The associates and co-partners of our loss, 
Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool, 
And call them not to share with us their 

part 
In this unhappy mansion, or once more 
\ With rallied arms to try what may be yet 
Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in 

Hell ? " 270 

So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub 
Thus answered : — " Leader of those armies 

bright 
Which, but the Omnipotent, none could 

have foiled ! 
If once they hear that voice, their liveliest 

pledge 
Of hope in fears and dangers — heard so 

oft 
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge 
Of battle, when it raged, in all assaults 
Their surest signal — they will soon resume 
New courage and revive, though now they 

lie 
Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of 

fire, 280 

As we ere while, astounded and amazed; 
No wonder, fallen such a pernicious highth! " 
He scarce had ceased when the superior 

Fiend 
Was moving toward the shore; his ponder- 
ous shield, 
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, 
Behind him cast. The broad circumfer- 
ence 
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose 

orb 
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
At evening, from the top of Fesole, 
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 290 
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. 
His spear — to equal which the tallest pine 
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 
Of some great Ammiral, were but a wand — 
He walked with, to support uneasy steps 
Over the burning marie, not like those steps 
On Heaven's azure; and the torrid clime 
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire. 
Nathless he so endured, till on the beach 
Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called 



His legions — Angel Forms, who lay en- 
tranced 301 
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the 

brooks 
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades 
High over-arched imbower; or scattered 

sedge 
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed 
Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves 

o'erthrew 
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, 
While with perfidious hatred they pursued 
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 
From the safe shore their floating car- 
cases 310 
And broken chariot-w leels. So thick be 

strown, 
Abject and lost, lay these, covering the 

flood, 
Under amazement of their hideous change 
He called so loud that all the hollow deep 
Of Hell resounded: — "Princes, Potentates, 
Warriors, the Flower of Heaven — once 

yours; now lost, 
If such astonishment as this can seize 
Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this 

place 
After the toil of battle to repose 319 

Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find 
To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven? 
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn 
To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds 
Cherub and Seraph rowling in the flood 
With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon 
His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates dis- 
cern 
The advantage, and, descending, tread us 

down 
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts 
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf ? — 
Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen ! " 330 
They heard, and were abashed, and up 
they sprung 
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch, 
On duty sleeping found by whom they 

dread, 
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well 

awake. 
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight 
In which they were, or the fierce pains not 

feel; 
Yet to their General's voice they soon 

obeyed 
Innumerable. As when the potent rod 
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day, 






; 




BOOK FIRST 



107 



Waved round the coast, up-called a pitchy 

cloud 340 

Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, 
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh 

hung 
Like Night, and darkened all the land of 

Nile; 
So numberless were those bad Angels seen 
Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell, 
'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires ; 
Till, as a signal given, the uplifted spear 
Of their great Sultan waving to direct 
Their course, in even balance down they 

light 
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the 

plain: 350 

A multitude like which the populous North 
Poured never from her frozen loins to pass 
Khene or the Danaw, when her barbarous 

sons 
Came like a deluge on the South, and 

spread 
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands. 
Forthwith, from every squadron and each 

band, 
The heads and leaders thither haste where 

stood 
Their great Commander — godlike Shapes, 

and Forms 
Excelling human; princely Dignities; 
And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on 

thrones, 360 

Though of their names in Heavenly records 

now 
Be no memorial, blotted out and rased 
By their rebellion from the Books of Life. 
Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve 
Got them new names, till, wandering o'er 

the earth, 
Through God's high sufferance for the trial 

of man, 
By falsities and lies the greatest part 
Of mankind they corrupted to forsake 
God their Creator, and the invisible 
Glory of Him that made them to trans- 
form 37 o 
Oft to the image of a brute, adorned 
With gay religions full of pomp and gold, 
And devils to adore for deities: 
Then were they known to men by various 

names, 
And various idols through the heathen 

world. 
Say, Muse, their names then known, who, 

first, who last, 



Roused from the slumber on that fiery 

couch, 
At their great Emperor's call, as next in 

worth 
Came singly where he stood on the bare 

strand, 
While the promiscuous crowd stood yet 

aloof. 380 

The chief were those who, from the pit 

of Hell 
Roaming to seek their prey on Earth, durst 

fix 
Their seats, long after, next the seat of 

God, 
Their altars by His altar, gods adored 
Among the nations round, and durst abide 
Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned 
Between the Cherubim; yea, often placed 
Within His sanctuary itself their shrines, 
Abominations; and with cursed things 
His holy rites and solemn feasts pro- 
faned, 390 
And with their darkness durst affront His 

light. 
First, Moloch, horrid King, besmeared with 

blood 
Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears; 
Though, for the noise of drums and tim- 
brels loud, 
Their children's cries unheard that passed 

through fire 
To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite 
Worshiped in Rabba and her watery plain, 
In Argob and in Basan, to the stream 
Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such 
Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest 

heart 400 

Of Solomon he led by fraud to build 
His temple right against the temple of 

God 
On that opprobrious hill, and made his 



grove 






The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet 

thence 
And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell. 
Next C hemoSj the obscene dread of Moab's 

sons. 
From A roar to Nebo and the wild 
Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon 
And Horonaim, Seon's realm, beyond 
The flowery dale of Sibma clad with 

vines, 410 

And Eleale to the Asphaltick Pool: 
Peor his other name, when he enticed 
Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile, 



io8 



PARADISE LOST 



To do him wanton rites, which cost them 

woe. 
Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged 
Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove 
Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate, 
/Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell^, 
With these came they who, from the bor- * 

dering flood 
Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts 420 
Egypt from Syrian ground, had general 

names 
Of Baalim and Ashtaroth — those male, 
These feminine. For Spirits, when they 

please, 
Can either sex assume, or both; so soft 
And uncompounded is their essence pure, 
Not tied or manacled with joint or limb, 
Nor founded on the brittle strength of 

bones, 
Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape 

they choose, 
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, 
Can execute their aery purposes, 430 

And works of love or enmity fulfil. 
For those the race of Israel oft forsook 
Their Living Strength, and unfrequented 

left 
His righteous altar, bowing lowly down 
To bestial gods; for which their heads, as 

low 
Bowed down in battle, sunk before the 

spear 
Of despicable foes. With these in troop 
Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called 
Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent 

horns; 
To whose bright image nightly by the 

moon 440 

Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs ; 
In Sion also not unsung, where stood 
Her temple on the offensive mountain, built 
By that uxorious king whose heart, though 

large, 
Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell 
To idols fouy Thammuz came next be- 
hind, 
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured 
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate 
In amorous ditties all a summer's day, 
While smooth Adonis from his native 

rock 450 

Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood 
Of Thammuz yearly wounded : the love-tale 
Infected Sion's daughters with like heat, 
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch 



Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led, 
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries 
Of alienated Judah. Next came one 
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive 

Ark 
Maimed his brute image, head and hands 

lopt off, 
In his own temple, on the grunsel-edge, 460 
Where he fell flat and shamed his worship- 
ers: 
J)agon his name, sea-monster, upward man 
And downward fish; yet had his temple 

high 
Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the 

coast 
Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon, 
And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds. 
Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful 

seat 
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks 
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams. 
He also against the hou^e of God was 



bold: 



r 



A leper once he lost^anctgained a king — 
Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he drew 
God's altar to disparage and displace 
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn 
His odious offerings, and adore the gods 
Whom he had vanquished. After these 

appeared 
A crew who, under names of old renown — 
Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train — 
With monstrous shapes and sorceries 

abused 
Fanatic Egypt and her priests to seek 480 
Their wandering gods disguised in brutish 

forms 
Rather than human. Nor did Israel scape 
The infection, when their borrowed gold 

composed / 
The calf in Oreb;' and the rebel king 
Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan, 
Likening his Maker to the grazed ox — 
Jehovah, who, in one night, when he passed 
From Egypt marching, equalled with one 

stroke 
Both her first-born and all her bleating 

gods. 
Belial came last; than whom a Spirit more 

lewd 490 

Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to 

love 
Vice for itself. To him no temple stood 
Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he 
In temples and at altars, when the priest 



BOOK FIRST 



109 



Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled 
With lust and violence the house of God ? 
In courts and palaces he also reigns, 
And in luxurious cities, where the noise 
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, 
And injury and outrage; and, when night 
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the 

sons 501 

Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. 
Witness the streets of Sodom, and that 

night 
In Gibeah, when the hospitable door 
Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape. 
These were the prime in order and in 

might : 
The rest were long to tell; though far re- 
nowned 
The Ionian gods — of Javan's issue held 
Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and 

Earth, 
Their boasted parents ; — Titan, Heaven's 

first-born, 510 

With his enormous brood, and birthright 

seized 
By younger Saturn : he from mightier Jove, 
His own and Rhea's son, like measure 

found; 
So Jove usurping reigned. These, first in 

Crete 
And Ida known, thence on the snowy top 
Of cold Olympus ruled the middle air, 
Their highest heaven; or on the Delphian 

cliff, 
Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds 
Of Doric land; or who with Saturn old 
Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields, 520 
And o'er the Celtic roamed the utmost 

Isles. 
All these and more came flocking; but 

with looks 
Downcast and damp; yet such wherein ap- 
peared 
Obscure some glimpse of joy to have found 

their Chief 
Not in despair, to have found themselves 

not lost 
In loss itself; which on his countenance cast 
Like doubtful hue. But he, his wonted 

pride 
Soon recollecting, with high words, that 

bore 
Semblance of worth, not substance, gently 

raised 
Their fainting courage, and dispelled their 

fears : 530 



Then straight commands that, at the war- 
like sound 
Of trumpets loud and clarions, be upreared 
His mighty standard. That proud honour 

claimed 
Azazel as his right, a Cherub tall: 
Who forthwith from the glittering staff 

unfurled 
The imperial ensign; which, full high ad- 
vanced, 
Shon like a meteor streaming to the wind, 
With gems and golden lustre rich imblazed, 
Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while 
Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds : 540 
At which the universal host up-sent 
A shout that tore Hell's concave, and be- 
yond 
Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. 
All in a moment through the gloom were 

seen 
Ten thousand banners rise into the air, 
With orient colours waving: with them rose 
A forest huge of spears; and thronging 

helms 
Appeared, and serried shields in thick ar- 
ray 
Of depth immeasurable. Anon they move 
In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood 550 
Of flutes and soft recorders — such as 

raised 
To highth of noblest temper heroes old 
Arming to battle, and instead of rage 
Deliberate valour breathed, firm, and un- 
moved 
With dread of death to flight or foul re- 
treat; 
Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage 
With solemn touches troubled thoughts, 

and chase 
Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow 

and pain 

From mortal or immortal minds. Thus 

they, _ 559 

Breathing united force with fixed thought, 

Moved on in silence to soft pipes that 

charmed 
Their painful steps o'er the burnt soil. 

And now 
Advanced in view they stand — a horrid 

front 
Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in 

guise 
Of warriors old, with ordered spear and 

shield, 
Awaiting what command their mighty Chief 



no 



PARADISE LOST 



ft 















Had to impose. He through the armed 

files 
Darts his experienced eye, and soon traverse 
The whole battalion views — their order 

due, 
Their visages and stature as of Gods; 570 
Their number last he sums. And now his 

heart 
Distends with pride, and, hardening in his 

frength, 
for never, since created Man, 
met such imbodied force as, named with 

these, 
Could merit more/ than that small infantry 
Warred on by ^ranes — though all the 

giant brood 
Of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined 
That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each 

side 
Mixed "with auxiliar gods; and what re- 
sounds K \ (,'- 
In fable or romance of Uther's son, I 580 
Begirt with British and Armoric knights; 
And all who since, baptized or infidel, 
Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, 
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, 
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore 
When Charlemain with all his peerage 

fell 
By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond 
Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed 
Their dread Commander. He, above the 

rest 
In shape and gesture proudly eminent, 59° 
Stood like a tower. His form had yet not 

lost 
All her original brightness, nor appeared 
Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess 
Of glory obscured: as when the sun new- 
risen 
Looks through the horizontal misty air 
Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the 

moon, 
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
On half the nations, and with fear of change 
Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet 

shon 
Above them all the Archangel: but his 
face 600 

Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and 

care 
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows 
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride 
Waiting revenge. Cruel his eye, but cast 
Signs of remorse and passion, to behold 



The fellows of his crime, the followers 

rather 
(Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned 
For ever now to have their lot in pain — 
Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced 
Of Heaven, and from eternal splendours 

flung 610 

For his revolt — yet faithful how they 

stood, 
Their glory withered ; as, when heaven's fire 
Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain 

pines, 
With singed top their stately growth, 
s^ though bare, 

Stands on the blasted heath. He now pre- 
pared 
To speak; whereat their doubled ranks 

they bend 
From wing to wing, and half enclose him 

round 
With all his peers: Attention held them 

mute. 
Thrice he assayed, and thrice, in spite of 

scorn, 
Tears, such as Angels weep, burst forth: 

at last 620 

Words interwove with sighs found out 

their way: — 
" O myriads of immortal Spirits ! O 

Powers 
Matchless, but with the Almighty ! — and 

that strife 
Was not inglorious, though the event was 

dire, 
As this place testifies, and this dire change, 
Hateful to utter. But what power of 

mind, 
Foreseeing or presaging, from the depth 
Of knowledge past or present, could have 

feared 
How such united force of gods, how such 
As stood like these, could ever know re- 
pulse ? 630 
For who can yet believe, though after loss, 
That all these puissant legions, whose exile 
Hath emptied Heaven, shall fail to re- 
ascend, 
Self-raised, and re-possess their native seat ? 
For me, be witness all the host of Heaven, 
If counsels different, or danger shunned 
By me, have lost our hopes. But he who 

reigns 
Monarch in Heaven till then as one secure 
Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute, 
Consent or custom, and his regal state 640 









BOOK FIRST 



Put forth at full, but still his strength con- 
cealed — 
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought 

our fall. 
Henceforth his might we know, and know 

our own, 
So as not either to provoke, or dread 
New war provoked: our better part re- 
mains 
To work in close design, by fraud or guile, 
What force effected not; that he no less 
At length from us may find^ Who over- 
comes 
By force hath overcome but half his foe. 
Space may produce new Worlds; whereof 

so rife 650 

There went a fame in Heaven that He ere 

long 
Intended to create, and therein plant 
A generation whom his choice regard 
Should favour equal to the Sons of Heaven. 
Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps 
Our first eruption — thither, or elsewhere ; 
For this infernal pit shall never hold 
Cselestial Spirits in bondage, nor the Abyss 
Long under darkness cover. But these 

thoughts 
Full counsel must mature. Peace is de- 
spaired ; 660 
For who can think submission ? War, then, 

war 
Open or understood, must be resolved." 
He spake; and, to confirm his words, 

out-flew 
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from 

the thighs 
Of mighty Cherubim ; the sudden blaze 
Far round illumined Hell. Highly they 

raged 
Against the Highest and fierce with 

grasped arms 
Clashed on their sounding shields the din 

of war, 
Hurling defiance toward the vault of 

Heaven. 
There stood a hill not far, whose griesly 

top 670 

Belched fire and rowling smoke; the rest 

entire 
Shon with a glossy scurf — undoubted sign 
That in his womb was hid metallic ore, 
The work of sulphur. Thither, winged 

with speed, 
A numerous brigad hastened: as when 

bands 



Of piouers, with spade and pickaxe armed, 
Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field, 
Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them 

on — 
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell 
From Heaven; for even in Heaven his 

looks and thoughts 680 

Were always downward bent, admiring 

more 
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden 

gold, 
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed 
In vision beatific. By him first 
Men also, and by his suggestion taught, 
Ransacked the Centre, and with impious 

hands 
Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth 
For treasures better hid. Soon had his 

crew 
Opened into the hill a spacious wound, 
And digged out ribs of gold. Let none 

admire 690 

That riches grow in Hell; that soil may 

best 
Deserve the pretious bane. And here let 

those 
Who boast in mortal things, and wondering 

tell 
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian 

kings, 
Learn how their greatest monuments of 

fame, 
And strength, and art, are easily outdone 
By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour 
What in an age they, with incessant toil 
And hands innumerable, scarce perform. 
Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared, 
That underneath had veins of liquid fire 701 
Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude 
With wondrous art founded the massy ore, 
Severing each kind, and scummed the bul- 
lion-dross. 
A third as soon had formed within the 

ground 
A various mould, and from the boiling cells 
By strange conveyance filled each hollow 

nook; 
As in an organ, from one blast of wind, 
To many a row of pipes the sound-board 

breathes. 
Anon out of the earth a fabric huge 710 
Rose like an exhalation, with the sound 
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet — 
Built like a temple, where pilasters round 
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid 



V 



PARADISE LOST 



With golden architrave ; nor did there want 
Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures 

graven : 
The roof was fretted gold. Not Babilon 
Nor great Alcairo such magnificence 
Equalled in all their glories, to inshrine 
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat 720 

Their kings, when iEgypt with Assyria 

strove 
In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile 
Stood fixed her stately highth; and straight 

the doors, 
Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide 
Within, her ample spaces o'er the smooth 
And level pavement: from the arched roof , 
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row 
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed 
With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light 
As from a sky. The hasty multitude 730 
Admiring entered; and the work some 

praise, 
And some the Architect. His hand was 

known 
In Heaven by many a towered structure 

high, 
Where sceptred Angels held their resi- 
dence, 
And sat as Princes, whom the supreme 

King 
Exalted to such power, and gave to rule, 
Each in his hierarchy, the Orders bright. 
Nor was his name unheard or unadored 
In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land 
Men called him Mulciber; and how he 

fell 740 

From Heaven they fabled, thrown byan- 

gry Jove / 

Sheer o'er the crystal battlements : from 
L morn 

To noon he fell, from-noon to dewy eve, 
A summer's day, and with the setting s"ttn 
Dropt from the zenith, like a falling star, 
On Lemnos, the iEgsean isle. Thus tHey 

relate, 
Erring; for he with this rebellious rout 
Fell long before; nor aught availed him 

now 
To have built in Heaven high towers; nor 

did he scape 
By all his engines, but was headlong 

sent, 750 

With his industrious crew, to build in Hell. 
Meanwhile the winged Haralds, by com- 
mand 
Of sovran power, with awful ceremony 



And trumpet's sound, throughout the host 

proclaim 
A solemn council forthwith to be held 
At Pandsemonium, the high capital 
Of Satan and his peers. Their summons 

called 
From every band and squared regiment 
By place or choice the worthiest: they anon 
With hundreds and with thousands troop- 
ing came 760 
Attended. All access was thronged; the 

gates 
And porches wide, but chief the spacious 

hall 
(Though like a covered field, where cham- 
pions bold 
Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's 

chair 
Defied the best of Panim chivalry 
To mortal combat, or career with lance), 
Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in 

the air, 
Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. 

As bees 
In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus 

rides, 
Pour forth their populous youth about the 

hive 770 

In clusters; they among fresh dews and 

flowers 
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, 
The suburb of their straw-built citadel, 
New rubbed with balm, expatiate, and , 

confer 1 V 

Their state-affairs: so thick the aerie crowd ' 
Swarmed and were straitened; till, the 

signal given, 
Behold a wonder ! They but now who 

seemed 
In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons, 
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow 

room 
Throng numberless — like that pygmean 

race 780 

Beyond the Indian mount; or faery elves, 
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side \ 
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, \ 
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the\ 

Moon 
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth 
Wheels her pale course: they, on their 

mirth and dance 
Intent, with jocond music charm his ear; 
At once with joy and fear his heart re- 
bounds. 



BOOK SECOND 



*3 



Thus incorporeal Spirits to smallest forms 
Reduced their shapes immense, and were 
at large, 790 

Though without number still, amidst the 

hall 
Of that infernal court. But far within, 
And in their own dimensions like them- 
selves, 






CI 



The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim 
In close recess and secret conclave sat, 
A thousand demi-gods on golden seats, 
Frequent and full. After short silence 

then, 
And summons read, the great consult be- 
gan. mS\ 



BOOK II 



THE ARGUMENT 









f-7^i 






The consultation begun, Satan debates whether 
another battle be to be hazarded for the recovery of 
Heaven : some advise it, others dissuade. A third pro- 
posal is preferred, mentioned before by Satan — to 
search the truth of that prophecy or tradition in Hea- 
ven concerning another world, and another kind of 
creature, equal, or not much inferior, to themselves, 
about this time to be created. Their doubt who shall 
be sent on this difficult search : Satan, their chief, un- 
dertakes alone the voyage ; is honoured and applauded. 
The council thus ended, the rest betake them several 
ways and to several imployments, as their inclinations 
lead them, to entertain the time till Satan return. He 
passes on his journey to Hell-gates ; finds them shut, 
and who sat there to guard them ; by whom at length 
they are opened, and discover to him the great gulf 
between Hell and Heaven. With what difficulty he 
passes through, directed by Chaos, the Power of that 
place, to the sight of this new World which he sought. 

High on a throne of royal state, which far 
Outshon the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
Or where the gorgeous East with richest 

hand 
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and 

gold, 
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised 
To that bad eminence; and, from despair 
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires 
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue 
Vain war with Heaven; and, by success 

untaught, 9 

His proud imaginations thus displayed : — 
" Powers and Dominions, Deities of 

Heaven ! — 
For, since no deep within her gulf can hold 
Immortal vigour, though oppressed and 

fallen, 
I give not Heaven for lost: from this de- 
scent 
Celestial Virtues rising will appear 
More glorious and more dread than from 

no fall, 
And trust themselves to fear no second 

fate ! — 
Me though just right, and the fixed laws 

of Heaven, 



Did first create your leader — next, free 

choice, 
With what besides in council or in fight 20 
Hath been achieved of merit — yet this loss, 
Thus far at least recovered, hath much 

more 
Established in a safe, unenvied throne, 
Yielded with full consent. The happier 

state 
In Heaven, which follows dignity, might 

draw 
Envy from each inferior; but who here 
Will envy whom the highest place exposes 
Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's 

aim 
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest 

share 
Of endless pain ? Where there is, then, no 

good 30 

For which to strive, no strife can grow up 

there 
From faction: for none sure will claim in 

Hell 
Precedence; none whose portion is so small 
Of present pain that with ambitious mind 
Will covet more ! With this advantage, 

then, 
To union, and firm faith, and firm accord, 
More than can be in Heaven, we now re- 
turn 
To claim our just inheritance of old, 
Surer to prosper than prosperity 
Could have assured us; and by what best 

way, 40 

Whether of open war or covert guile, 
We now debate. Who can advise may 

speak." 
He ceased; and next him Moloch, scep- 
tred king, 
Stood up — the strongest and the fiercest 

Spirit 
That fought in Heaven, now fiercer by 

despair. 
His trust was with the Eternal to be 

deemed 









-vw 



114 



<A0 I 



PARADISE LOST 



Equal in strength, and rather than be less 
Cared not to be at all; with that care lost 
Went all his fear: of God, or Hell, or 

worse, 
He recked not, and these words thereafter 

spake : — 50 

" My sentence is for open war. Of wiles, 

More unexpert, I boast not: them let those 

Contrive who need, or when they need; 

not now. 
For, while they sit contriving, shall the 

rest — 
Millions that stand in arms, and longing 

wait 
The signal to ascend — sit lingering here, 
Heaven's fugitives, and for their dwelling- 
place 
Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame, 
The prison of His tyranny who reigns 
By our delay ? No ! let us rather choose, 60 
Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at 

once 
O'er Heaven's high towers to force resist- 
less way, 
Turning our tortures into horrid arms 
Against the Torturer; when, to meet the 

noise 
Of his almighty engine, he shall hear 
Infernal thunder, and, for lightning, see 
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage 
Among his Angels, and his throne itself 
Mixed with Tartarean sulphur and strange 

fire, 69 

His own invented torments. But perhaps 
The way seems difficult, and steep to scale 
With upright wing against a higher foe ! 
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench 
Of that forgetful lake benumb not still, 
That in our proper motion we ascend 
Up to our native seat; descent and fall 
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late, 
When the fierce foe hung on our broken 

rear 
Insulting, and pursued us through the 

Deep, 
With what compulsion and laborious flight 
We sunk thus low ? The ascent is easy, 

then; 81 

The event is feared ! Should we again 

provoke 
Our stronger, some worse way his wrath 

may find 
To our destruction, if there be in Hell 
Fear to be worse destroyed ! What can 

be worse 



Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, 

condemned 
In this abhorred deep to utter woe; 
Where pain of unextinguishable fire 
Must exercise us without hope of end 
The vassals of his anger, when the scourge 
Inexorably, and the torturing hour, <jr 

Calls us to penance ? More destroyed than 

thus, 
We should be quite abolished, and expire. 
What fear we then ? what doubt we to in- 
cense 
His utmost ire ? which, to the highth en- 
raged, 
Will either quite consume us, and reduce 
To nothing this essential — happier far 
Than miserable to have eternal being ! — 
Or, if our substance be indeed divine, 
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst 100 
On this side nothing; and by proof we feel 
Our power sufficient to disturb his Heaven, 
And with perpetual inroads to alarm, 
Though inaccessible, his fatal Throne: 
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge." 
He ended frowning, and his look de- 
nounced 
Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous 
To less than gods. On the other side up 

rose 
Belial, in act more graceful and humane. 
A fairer person lost not Heaven; he 
seemed no 

For dignity composed, and high exploit. 
But all was false and hollow; though his 

tongue 
Dropt manna, and could make the worse 

appear 
The better reason, to perplex and dash 
Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were 

low — 
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds 
Timorous and slothful. Yet he pleased the 

ear, 
And with persuasive accent thus began: — 
" I should be much for open war, O 
Peers, "9 

As not behind in hate, if what was urged 
Main reason to persuade immediate war 
Did not dissuade me most, and seem to 

cast 
Ominous conjecture on the whole success; 
When he who most excels in fact of arms, 
In what he counsels and in what excels 
Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair 
Aud utter dissolution, as the scope 



BOOK SECOND 



"5 



Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. 
First, what revenge ? The towers of Hea- 
ven are filled 129 
With armed watch, that render all access 
Impregnable: oft on the bordering Deep 
Encamp their legions, or with obscure 

wing 
Scout far and wide into the realm of 

Night, 
Scorning surprise. Or, could we break our 

way 
By force, and at our heels all Hell should 

rise 
With blackest insurrection to confound 
Heaven's purest light, yet our great En- 
emy, 
All incorruptible, would on his throne 
Sit unpolluted, and the ethereal mould, 
Incapable of stain, would soon expel 140 
Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire, 
Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope 
Is flat despair: we must exasperate 
The Almighty Victor to spend all his rage; 
And that must end us; that must be our 

cure — 
To be no more. Sad cure ! for who would 

lose, 
Though full of pain, this intellectual being, 
Those thoughts that wander through eter- 
nity, 
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost 
In the wide womb of uncreated Night, 150 
Devoid of sense and motion ? And who 

knows, 
Let this be good, whether our angry Foe 
Can give it, or will ever ? How he can 
Is doubtful; that he never will is sure. 
Will He, so wise, let loose at once his ire, 
Belike through impotence or unaware, 
To give his enemies their wish, and end 
Them in his anger whom his anger saves 
To punish endless ? ' Wherefore cease we, 

then ? ' 
Say they who counsel war ; ' we are de- 
creed, 160 
Reserved, and destined to eternal woe; 
Whatever doing, what can we suffer more, 
What can we suffer worse ? ' Is this, then, 

worst — 
Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms ? 
What when we fled amain, pursued and 

strook 
With Heaven's afflicting thunder, and be- 
sought 



The Deep to shelter us ? This Hell then 

seemed 
A refuge from those wounds. Or when we 

lay 
Chained on the burning lake ? That sure 

was worse. 
What if the breath that kindled those grim 

fires, 170 

Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold 

rage, 
And plunge us in the flames; or from 

above 
Should intermitted vengeance arm again 
His red right hand to plague us ? What 

if all 
Her stores were opened, and this firma- 
ment 
Of Hell should spout her cataracts of fire, 
Impendent horrors, threatening hideous 

fall 
One day upon our heads; while we per- 
haps, 
Designing or exhorting glorious war, 
Caught in a fiery tempest, shall be hurled, 
Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and 

prey 181 

Of racking whirlwinds, or for ever sunk 
Under yon boiling ocean, wrapt in chains, 
There to converse with everlasting groans, 
Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved, 
Ages of hopeless end ? This would be 

worse. 
War, therefore, open or concealed, alike 
My voice dissuades; for what can force or 

guile 
With Him, or who deceive His mind, whose 

eye 
Views all things at one view ? He from 

Heaven's highth 190 

All these our motions vain sees and de- 
rides, 
Not more almighty to resist our might 
Than wise to frustrate all our plots and 

wiles. 
Shall we, then, live thus vile — the race of 

Heaven 
Thus trampled, thus expelled, to suffer 

here 
Chains and these torments ? Better these 

than worse, 
By my advice; since fate inevitable 
Subdues us, and omnipotent decree, 
The Victor's will. To suffer, as to do, 
Our strength is equal; nor the law unjust 



n6 



PARADISE LOST 



That so ordains. This was at first re- 
solved, 20I 
If we were wise, against so great a foe 
Contending, and so doubtful what might 

fall. 
I laugh when those who at the spear are 

bold 
And ventrous, if that fail them, shrink, and 

fear 
What yet they know must follow — to en- 
dure 
Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain, 
The sentence of their conqueror. This is 

now 
Our doom; which if we can sustain and 
bear, 209 

Our Supreme Foe in time may much re- 
mit 
His anger, and perhaps, thus far removed, 
Not mind us not offending, satisfied 
With what is punished; whence these ra- 
ging fires 
Will slacken, if his breath stir not their 

flames. 
Our purer essence then will overcome 
Their noxious vapour; or, inured, not feel; 
Or, changed at length, and to the place 

conformed 
In temper and in nature, will receive 
Familiar the fierce heat; and, void of pain, 
This horror will grow mild, this darkness 
light; 220 

Besides what hope the never-ending flight 
Of future days may bring, what chance, 

what change 
Worth waiting — since our present lot ap- 
pears 
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst, 
If we procure not to ourselves more woe." 
Thus Belial, with words clothed in rea- 
son's garb, 
Counselled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth, 
Not peace; and after him thus Mammon 
spake : — 
" Either to disinthrone the King of Hea- 
ven 
We war, if war be best, or to regain _2^o 
Our own right lost. Him to unthrone we 

then 
May hope, when everlasting Fate shall 

yield 
To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the 

strife. 
The former, vain to hope, argues as vain 
The latter; for what place can be for us 



Within Heaven's bound, unless Heaven's 

Lord Supreme 
We overpower ? Suppose he should re- 
lent, 
And publish grace to all, on promise made 
Of new subjection; with what eyes could 
we 239 

Stand in his presence humble, and receive 
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne 
With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead 

sing 
Forced Halleluiahs, while he lordly sits 
Our envied sovran, and his altar breathes 
Ambrosial odours and ambrosial flowers, 
Our servile offerings ? This must be our 

task 
In Heaven, this our delight. How weari- 
some 
Eternity so spent in worship paid 
To whom we hate ! Let us not then pur- 
sue, 
By force impossible, by leave obtained 250 
Unacceptable, though in Heaven, our state 
Of splendid vassalage; but rather seek 
Our own good from ourselves, and from 

our own 
Live to ourselves, though in this vast re- 
cess, 
Free and to none accountable, preferring 
Hard liberty before the easy yoke 
Of servile pomp. Our greatness will ap- 
pear 
Then most conspicuous when great things 

of small, 
Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse, 
We can create, and in what place soe'er 
Thrive under evil, and work ease out of 
pain 261 

Through labour and indurance'. This deep 

world 
Of darkness do we dread ? How oft 

amidst 
Thick clouds and dark doth Heaven's all- 
ruling Sire 
Choose to reside, his glory unobscured, 
And with the majesty of darkness round 
Covers his throne, from whence deep thun- 
ders roar, 
Mustering their rage, and Heaven resem- 
bles Hell ! 
As He our darkness, cannot we His light 
Imitate when we please ? This desart 
soil 270 

Wants not her hidden lustre, gems and 
gold; 



N? ' 









9* ' BOOK SECOND 



Nor want we skill or art from whence to 

raise 
Magnificence; and what can Heaven shew 

more ? 
Our torments also may, in length of time, 
Become our elements, these piercing fires 
As soft as now severe, our temper changed 
Into their temper; which must needs re- 
move 
The sensible of pain. All things invite 
To peaceful counsels, and the settled state 
Of order, how in safety best we may 280 
Compose our present evils, with regard 
Of what we are and where, dismissing quite 
All thoughts of war. Ye have what I 
advise." 
He scarce had finished, when such mur- 
mur filled 
The assembly as when hollow rocks re- 
tain 
The sound of blustering winds, which all 

night long 
Had roused the sea, now with hoarse ca- 
dence lull 
Seafaring men o'erwatched, whose bark by 

chance, 
Or pinnace, anchors in a craggy bay 
After the tempest. Such applause was 
heard 290 

As Mammon ended, and his sentence 

pleased, 
Advising peace: for such another field 
They dreaded worse than Hell; so much 

the fear 
Of thunder and the sword of Michael 
"Wrought still within them; and no less 

desire 
To found this nether empire, which might 

rise, 
By policy and long process' of time, 
In emulation opposite to Heaven. 
Which when Beelzebub perceived — than 

whom, 
Satan except, none higher sat — with 
grave 300 

Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed 
A pillar of state. Deep on his front en- 
graven 
Deliberation sat, and public care; 
And princely counsel in his face yet shon, 
Majestic, though in ruin. Sage he stood, 
With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear 
The weight of mightiest monarchies; his 

look 
Drew audience and attention still as night 



.' 



Or summer's noontide air, while thus he 
spake : — 
" Thrones and Imperial Powers, Off- 
spring of Heaven, 310 
Ethereal Virtues ! or these titles now 
Must we renounce, and, changing style, be 

called 
Princes of Hell ? for so the popular vote 
Inclines — here to continue, and build up 

here 
A growing empire; doubtless ! while we 

dream, 
And know not that the King of Heaven 

hath doomed 
This place our dungeon — not our safe 

retreat 
Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt 
From Heaven's high jurisdiction, in new 

league 
Banded against his throne, but to re- 
main 320 
In strictest bondage, though thus far re- 
moved, 
Under the inevitable curb, reserved 
His captive multitude. For He, be sure, 
In highth or depth, still first and last will 

reign 
Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part 
By our revolt, but over Hell extend 
His empire, and with iron sceptre rule 
Us here, as with his golden those in Heaven. 
What sit we then projecting peace and war? 
War hath determined us and foiled with 

loSS 330 

Irreparable; terms of peace yet none 
Voutsafed or sought; for what peace will 

be given 
To us enslaved, but custody severe, 
And stripes and arbitrary punishment 
Inflicted ? and what peace can we return, 
But, to our power, hostility and hate, 
Untamed reluctance, and revenge, though 

slow, 
Yet ever plotting how the Conqueror least 
May reap his conquest, and may least 

rejoice 
In doing what we most in suffering feel ? 340 
Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need 
With dangerous expedition to invade 
Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault 

or siege, 
Or ambush from the Deep. What if we 

find 
Some easier enterprise ? There is a place 
(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven 



n8 



PARADISE LOST 



Err not) — another World, the happy seat 
Of some new race, called Man, about this 

time 
To be created like to us, though less 
In power and excellence, but favoured 

more 350 

Of Him who rules above; so was His will 
Pronounced among the gods, and by an 

oath 
That shook Heaven's whole circumference 

confirmed. 
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to 

learn 
What creatures there inhabit, of what 

mould 
Or substance, how endued, and what their 

power 
And where their weakness: how attempted 

best, 
By force or subtlety. Though Heaven be 

shut, 
And Heaven's high Arbitrator sit secure 
In his own strength, this place may lie 

exposed, 360 

The utmost border of his kingdom, left 
To their defence who hold it: here, perhaps, 
Some advantageous act may be achieved 
By sudden onset — either with Hell-fire 
To waste his whole creation, or possess 
All as our own, and drive, as we are driven, 
The puny habitants; or, if not drive, 
Seduce them to our party, that their God 
May prove their foe, and with repenting 

hand 
Abolish his own works. This would sur- 
pass 370 
Common revenge, and interrupt His joy 
In our confusion, and our joy upraise 
In His disturbance; when his darling sons, 
Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall 

curse 
Their frail original, and faded bliss — 
Faded so soon ! Advise if this be worth 
Attempting, or to sit in darkness here 
Hatching vain empires." Thus Beelzebub 
Pleaded his devilish counsel — first devised 
By Satan, and in part proposed: for 

whence, 380 

But from the author of all ill, could spring 
So deep a malice, to confound the race 
Of mankind in one root, and Earth with 

Hell 
To mingle and involve, done all to spite 
The great Creator ? But their spite still 



His glory to augment. The bold design 
Pleased highly those Infernal States, and 

joy 
Sparkled in all their eyes: with full assent 
They vote: whereat his speech he thus 

renews : — 
"Well have ye judged, well ended long 

debate, 390 

Synod of Gods, and, like to what ye are, 
Great things resolved, which from the low- 
est deep 
Will once more lift us up, in spite of fate, 
Nearer our ancient Seat — perhaps in view 
Of those bright confines, whence, with 

neighbouring arms, 
And opportune excursion, we may chance 
Re-enter Heaven; or else in some mild 

zone 
Dwell, not unvisited of Heaven's fair light, 
Secure, and at the brightening orient beam 
Purge off this gloom: the soft delicious 

air, 40° 

To heal the scar of these corrosive fires, 
Shall breathe her balm. But, first, whom 

shall we send 
In search of this new World ? whom shall 

we find 
Sufficient? who shall tempt with wandering 

feet 
The dark, unbottomed, infinite Abyss, 
And through the palpable obscure find out 
His uncouth way, or spread his aerie flight, 
Upborne with indefatigable wings 
Over the vast Abrupt, ere he arrive 
The happy Isle ? What strength, what art, 

can then 410 

Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe 
Through the strict senteries and stations 

thick 
Of Angels watching round ? Here he had 

need 
All circumspection: and we now no less 
Choice in our suffrage; for on whom we 

send 
The weight of all, and our last hope, relies." 

This said, he sat; and expectation held 
His look suspense, awaiting who appeared 
To second, or oppose, or undertake 
The perilous attempt. But all sat mute, 420 
Pondering the danger with deep thoughts; 

and each 
In other's countenance read his own dis- 
may, 
Astonished. None among the choice and 

prime 



BOOK SECOND 



n 9 



Of those Heaven-warring champions could 

be found 
So hardy as to proffer or accept, 
Alone, the dreadful voyage ; till, at last, 
Satan, whom now transcendent glory raised 
Above his fellows, with monarchal pride 
Conscious of highest worth, unmoved thus 
spake : — 
" O Progeny of Heaven ! Empyreal 
Thrones ! 430 

With reason hath deep silence and demur 
Seized us, though undismayed. Long is 

the way 
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to 

Light. 
Our prison strong, this huge convex of fire, 
Outrageous to devour, immures us round 
Ninefold ; and gates of burning adamant, 
Barred over us, prohibit all egress. 
These passed, if any pass, the void pro- 
found 
Of unessential Night receives him next, 
Wide-gaping, and with utter loss of be- 
ing 44° 
Threatens him, plunged in that abortive 

gulf. 
If thence he scape, into whatever world, 
Or unknown region, what remains him less 
Than unknown dangers, and as hard es- 
cape ? 
But I should ill become this throne, O Peers, 
And this imperial sovranty, adorned 
With splendour, armed with power, if 

aught proposed 
And judged of public moment in the shape 
Of difficulty or danger, could deter 
Me from attempting. Wherefore do I as- 
sume 450 
These royalties, and not refuse to reign, 
Refusing to accept as great a share 
Of hazard as of honour, due alike 
To him who reigns, and so much to him 

due 
Of hazard more as he above the rest 
High honoured sits ? Go, therefore, mighty 

Powers, 
Terror of Heaven, though fallen; intend at 

home, 
While here shall be our home, what best 

may ease 
The present misery, and render Hell 459 
More tolerable; if there be cure or charm 
To respite, or deceive, or slack the pain 
Of this ill mansion: intermit no watch 
Against a wakeful Foe, while I abroad 



Through all the coasts of dark destruction 

seek 
Deliverance for us all. This enterprise 
None shall partake with me." Thus say- 
ing, rose 
The Monarch, and prevented all reply; 
Prudent lest, from his resolution raised, 
Others among the chief might offer now, 
Certain to be refused, what erst they 

feared, 47 o 

And, so refused, might in opinion stand 
His rivals, winning cheap the high repute 
Which he through hazard huge must earn. 

But they 
Dreaded not more the adventure than his 

voice 
Forbidding; and at once with him they 

rose. 
Their rising all at once was as the sound 
Of thunder heard remote. Towards him 

they bend 
With awful reverence prone, and as a God 
Extol him equal to the Highest in Heaven. 
Nor failed they to express how much they 

praised 480 

That for the general safety he despised 
His own: for neither do the Spirits damned 
Lose all their virtue; lest bad men should 

boast 
Their specious deeds on earth, which glory 

excites, 
Or close ambition varnished o'er with zeal. 
Thus they their doubtful consultations 

dark 
Ended, rejoicing in their matchless Chief: 
As, when from mountain-tops the dusky 

clouds 
Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, 

o'erspread 489 

Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element 
Scowls o'er the darkened lantskip snow or 

shower, 
If chance the radiant sun, with farewell 

sweet, 
Extend his evening beam, the fields revive, 
The birds their notes renew, and bleating 

herds 
Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings. 
O shame to men ! Devil with devil damned 
Firm concord holds; men only disagree 
Of creatures rational, though under hope 
Of heavenly grace, and, God proclaiming 

peace, 
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife 500 
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars 



PARADISE LOST 



Wasting the earth, each other to destroy: 
As if (which might induce us to accord) 
Man had not hellish foes enow besides, 
That day and night for his destruction 
wait ! 
The Stygian council thus dissolved; and 
forth 
In order came the grand Infernal Peers: 
Midst came their mighty Paramount, and 

seemed 
Alone the Antagonist of Heaven, nor less 
Than Hell's dread Emperor, with pomp 
supreme, 510 

And god-like imitated state: him round 
A globe of fiery Seraphim inclosed 
With bright imblazonry, and horrent arms. 
Then of their session ended they bid cry 
With trumpet's regal sound the great re- 
sult: 
Toward the four winds four speedy Cheru- 
bim 
Put to their mouths the sounding alchymy, 
By harald's voice explained; the hollow 

Abyss 
Heard far and wide, and all the host of 

Hell 
With deafening shout returned them loud 
acclaim. 520 

Thence more at ease their minds, and some- 
what raised 
By false presumptuous hope, the ranged 

Powers 
Disband; and, wandering, each his several 

way 
Pursues, as inclination or sad choice 
Leads him perplexed, where he may likeli- 
est find 
Truce to his restless thoughts, and enter- 
tain 
The irksome hours, till his great Chief 

return. 
Part on the plain, or in the air sublime, 
Upon the wing or in swift race contend, 
As at the Olympian games or Pythian 
fields; 530 

Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the 

goal 
With rapid wheels, or fronted brigads 

form: 
As when, to warn proud cities, war appears 
Waged in the troubled sky, and armies 

rush 
To battle in the clouds; before each van 
Prick forth the aerie knights, and couch 
their spears, 



Till thickest legions close; with feats of 

arms 
From either end of heaven the welkin 

burns. 
Others, with vast Typhoean rage, more fell, 
Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the 

air 540 

In whirlwind; Hell scarce holds the wild 

uproar: — 
As when Alcides, from CEchalia crowned 
With conquest, felt the envenomed robe, 

and tore 
Through pain up by the roots Thessalian 

pines, 
And Lichas from the top of (Eta threw 
Into the Euboic sea. Others, more mild, 
Retreated in a silent valley, sing 
With notes angelical to many a harp 
Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall 
By doom of battle, and complain that Fate 
Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or 

Chance. 551 

Their song was partial ; but the harmony 
(What could it less when Spirits immortal 

sing?) 
Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment 
The thronging audience. In discourse more 

sweet 
(For Eloquence the. Soul, Song charms the 

Sense) 
Others apart sat on a hill retired, 
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned 

high 
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and 

Fate — 
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge ab- 
solute — 560 
And found no end, in wandering mazes 

lost. 
Of good and evil much they argued then, 
Of happiness and final misery, 
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame: 
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy ! — 
Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm 
Pain for a while or anguish, and excite 
Fallacious hope, or arm the obdured breast 
With stubborn patience as with triple 

steel. 
Another part, in squadrons and gross 

bands, 570 

On bold adventure to discover wide 
That dismal world, if any clime perhaps 
Might yield them easier habitation, bend 
Four ways their flying march, along the 

banks 



BOOK SECOND 



121 



Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge 
Into the burning lake their baleful 

streams — 
Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate; 
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep; 
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud 
Heard on the rueful stream ; fierce Phlege- 

ton, 580 

Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with 

rage. 
Far off from these, a slow and silent stream, 
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rowls 
Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks 
Forthwith his former state and being for- 
gets — 
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and 

pain. 
Beyond this flood a frozen continent 
Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual 

storms 
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm 

land 
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin 



Of ancient pile ; all else deep snow and ice, 
A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog 
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, 
Where armies whole have sunk: the parch- 
ing air 
Burns frore, and cold performs the effect 

of fire. 
Thither, by harpy-footed Furies haled, 
At certain revolutions all the damned 
Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter 

change 
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change 

more fierce, 
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice 
Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to 

pine 601 

Immovable, infixed, and frozen round 
Periods of time, — thence hurried back to 

fire. 
They ferry over this Lethean sound 
Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment, 
And wish and struggle, as they pass, to 

reach 
The tempting stream, with one small drop 

to lose 
In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe, 
All in one moment, and so near the brink; 
But Fate withstands, and, to oppose the 

attempt, 610 

Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards 
The ford, and of itself the water flies 



All taste of living wight, as once it fled 

The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on 

In confused march forlorn, the adventrous 

bands, 
With shuddering horror pale, and eyes 

aghast, 
Viewed first their lamentable lot, and 

found 
No rest. Through many a dark and dreary 

vale 
They passed, and many a region dolorous, 
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, 620 
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and 

shades of death — 
A universe of death, which God by curse 
Created evil, for evil only good; 
Where all life dies, death lives, and Na- 
ture breeds, 
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious 

things, 
Abominable, inutterable, and worse 
Than fables yet have feigned or fear con- 
ceived, 
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire. 
Meanwhile the Adversary of God and" 

Man, 
Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest 

design, 630 

Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates 

of Hell 
Explores his solitary flight: sometimes 
He scours the right hand coast, sometimes 

the left; 
Now shaves with level wing the Deep, then 

soars 
Up to the fiery concave towering high. 
As when far off at sea a fleet descried 
Hangs in the clouds, by aequinoctial winds 
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles 
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants 

bring 
Their spicy drugs; they on the trading 

flood, 64c 

Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape, 
Ply stemming nightly toward the pole: so 

seemed 
Far off the flying Fiend. At last appear 
Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid 

roof, 
And thrice threefold the gates; three folds 

were brass, 
Three iron, three of adamantine rock, 
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, 
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there 

sat 



122 



PARADISE LOST 



On either side a formidable Shape. 

The one seemed woman to the waist, and 

fair, 650 

But ended foul in many a scaly fold, 
Voluminous and vast — a serpent armed 
With mortal sting. About her middle 

round 
A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked 
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and 

rung 
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would 

creep, 
If aught disturbed their noise, into her 

womb, 
And kennel there; yet there still barked 

and howled 
Within unseen. Far less abhorred than 

these 
Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that 

parts 660 

Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore; 
Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, 

called 
In secret, riding through the air she comes, 
Lured with the smell of infant blood, to 

dance 
With Lapland witches, while the labouring 

moon 
Eclipses at their charms. The other 

Shape — 
If shape it might be called that shape had 

none 
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb; 
Or substance might be called that shadow 

seemed, 
For each seemed either — black it stood as 

Night, 670 

Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, 
And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed 

his head 
The likeness of a kingly crown had on. 
Satan was now at band, and from his seat 
The monster moving onward came as fast 
With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he 

strode. 
The undaunted Fiend what this might be 

admired — 
Admired, not feared (God and his Son ex- 
cept, 
Created thing naught valued he nor 

shunned), 
And with disdainful look thus first be- 
gan : — 680 
" Whence and what art thou, execrable 

Shape, 



That dar'st, though grim and terrible, ad- 
vance 
Thy miscreated front athwart my way 
To yonder gates ? Through them I mean 

to pass, 
That be assured, without leave asked of 

thee. 
Retire; or taste thy folly, and learn by 

proof, 
Hell-born, not to contend with Spirits, of 
"^ Heaven." vj 

To whom the Goblin, full of wrauth, 
replied: — 
" Art thou that Traitor-Angel, art thou he, 
Who first broke peace in Heaven and faith, 
till then 690 

Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms 
Drew after him the third part of Heaven's 

sons, 
Conjured against the Highest — for which 

both thou 
And they, outcast from God, are here con- 
demned 
To waste eternal days in woe and pain ? 
And reckon'st thou thyself with Spirits of 

Heaven, 
Hell-doomed, and breath'st defiance here 

and scorn, 
Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee 

more, 
Thy king and lord ? Back to thy punish- 
ment, 
False fugitive ; and to thy speed add wings, 
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue 701 
Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this 

dart 
Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt 
before." 
So spake the griesly Terror, and in 
shape, 
So speaking and so threatening, grew ten- 
fold 
More dreadful and deform. On the other 

side, 
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood 
Unterrified, and like a comet burned, 
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge 
In the artick sky, and from his horrid 
hair 7 10 

Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the 

head 
Levelled his deadly aim; their fatal hands 
No second stroke intend; and such a frown 
Each cast at the other as when two black 
clouds, 



BOOK SECOND 



123 



With heaven's artillery fraught, come rat- 
tling on 
Over the Caspian, — then stand front to 

front 
Hovering a space, till winds the signal 

blow- 
To join their dark encounter in mid-air. 
So frowned the mighty combatants that 

Hell 
Grew darker at their frown; so matched 

they stood; 720 

For never but once more was either like 
To meet so great a foe. And now great 

deeds 
Had been achieved, whereof all Hell had 

rung, 
Had not the snaky Sorceress, that sat 
Fast by Hell-gate and kept the fatal key, 
Risen, and with hideous outcry rushed be- 
tween. 
" O father, what intends thy hand," she 

cried, 
" Against thy only son ? What fury, O 

son, 
Possesses thee to bend that mortal dart 
Against thy father's head ? And know'st 

for whom ? 730 

For Him who sits above, and laughs the 

while 
At thee, ordained his drudge to execute 
Whate'er his wrauth, which He calls justice, 

bids — 
His wrauth, which one dav will destroy ye 

both ! " 
She spake, and at her words the hellish 

Pest 
Forbore: then these to her Satan re- 
turned: — 
" So strange thy outcry, and thy words 

so strange 
Thou interposest, that my sudden hand, 
Prevented, spares to tell thee yet by deeds 
What it intends, till first I know of thee 
What thing thou art, thus double-formed, 

and why, 74 i 

In this infernal vale first met, thou call'st 
Me father, and that fantasm call'st my son. 
I know thee not, nor ever saw till now 
Sight more detestable than him and thee." 
To whom thus the Portress of Hell-gate 

replied : — 
"Hast thou forgot me, then; and do I 

seem 
Now in thine eye so foul ? — once deemed 

so fair 



In Heaven, when at the assembly, and in 

Sight _ 749 

Of all the Seraphim with thee combined 
In bold conspiracy against Heaven's King, 
All on a sudden miserable pain 
Surprised thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzy 

swum 
In darkness, while thy head flames thick 

and fast 
Threw forth, till on the left side opening 

wide, 
Likest to thee in shape and countenance 

bright, 
Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess 

armed, 
Out of thy head I sprung. Amazement 

seized 
All the host of Heaven; back they recoiled 

afraid 759 

At first, and called me Sin, and for a sign 
Portentous held me; but, familiar grown, 
I pleased, and with attractive graces won 
The most averse — thee chiefly, who, full 

oft 
Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing, 
Becam'st enamoured; and such joy thou 

took'st 
With me in secret that my womb conceived 
A growing burden. Meanwhile war arose, 
And fields were fought in Heaven: wherein 

remained 
(For what could else ?) to our Almighty 

Foe 
Clear victory ; to our part loss and rout 770 
Through all the Empyrean. Down they 

fell, 
Driven headlong from the pitch of Heaven, 

down 
Into this Deep; and in the general fall 
I also: at which time this powerful Key 
Into my hands was given, with charge to 

keep 
These gates for ever shut, which none can 

pass 
Without my opening. Pensive here I sat 
Alone ; but long I sat not, till my womb, 
Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown, 
Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes. 
At last this odious offspring whom thou 

seest, 781 

Thine own begotten, breaking violent way, 
Tore through my entrails, that, with fear 

and pain 
Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew 
Transformed: but he my inbred enemy 



124 



PARADISE LOST 



Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart, 
Made to destroy. I fled, and cried out 

Death ! 
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and 

sighed 
From all her caves, and back resounded 

Death 1 
I fled; but he pursued (though more, it 
seems, 79° 

Inflamed with lust than rage), and, swifter 

far, 
Me overtook, his mother, all dismayed, 
And, in embraces forcible and foul 
Engendering with me, of that rape begot 
These yelling monsters, that with ceaseless 

cry 
Surround me, as thou saw'st — hourly con- 
ceived 
And hourly born, with sorrow infinite 
To me: for, when they list, into the womb 
That bred them they return, and howl, and 

gnaw 
My bowels, their repast; then, bursting 
forth 8oo 

Afresh, with conscious terrors vex me 

round, 
That rest or intermission none I find. 
Before mine eyes in opposition sits 
Grim Death, my son and foe, who sets 

them on, 
And me, his parent, would full soon de- 
vour 
For want of other prey, but that he knows 
His end with mine involved, and knows 

that I 
Should prove a bitter morsel, and his bane, 
Whenever that shall be: so Fate pro- 
nounced. 
But thou, O father, I forewarn thee, shun 
His deadly arrow; neither vainly hope 8n 
To be invulnerable in those bright arms, 
Though tempered heavenly; for that mor- 
tal dint, 
Save He who reigns above, none can re- 
sist." 
She finished; and the subtle Fiend his 
lore 
Soon learned, now milder, and thus an- 
swered smooth: — 
" Dear daughter — since thou claim'st 
me for thy sire, 
And my fair son here show'st me, the dear 

pledge 
Of dalliance had with thee in Heaven, and 
joys 



Then sweet, now sad to mention, through 

dire change 820 

Befallen us unforeseen, unthought-of — 

know, 
I come no enemy, but to set free 
From out this dark and dismal house of 

pain 
Both him and thee, and all the Heavenly 

host 
Of Spirits that, in our just pretences armed, 
Fell with us from on high. From them I 

go 
This uncouth errand sole, and one for all 
Myself expose, with lonely steps to tread 
The unfounded Deep, and through the void 

immense 
To search, with wandering quest, a place 

foretold 830 

Should be — and, by concurring signs, ere 

now 
Created vast and round — a place of bliss 
In the pourlieues of Heaven; and therein 

placed 
A race of upstart creatures, to supply 
Perhaps our vacant room, though more 

removed, 
Lest Heaven, surcharged with potent mul- 
titude, 
Might hap to move new broils. Be this, or 

aught 
Than this more secret, now designed, I 

haste 
To know ; and, this once known, shall soon 

return, 
And bring ye to the place where thou and 

Death 840 

Shall dwell at ease, and up and down un- 
seen 
Wing silently the buxom air, imbalmed 
With odours. There ye shall be fed and 

filled 
Immeasurably; all things shall be your 

prey." 
He ceased; for both seemed highly 

pleased, and Death 
Grinned horrible a ghastly smile, to hear 
His famine should be filled, and blessed his 

maw 
Destined to that good hour. No less re- 
joiced 
His mother bad, and thus bespake her 

Sire : — 
" The key of this infernal Pit, by due 
And by command of Heaven's all-powerful 

King, 851 



BOOK SECOND 



I2 5 



I keep, by Him forbidden to unlock 
These adamantine gates; against all force 
Death ready stands to interpose his dart, 
Fearless to be o'ermatched by living might. 
But what owe I to His commands above, 
Who hates me, and hath hither thrust me 

down 
Into this gloom of Tartarus profound, 
To sit in hateful office here confined, 
Inhabitant of Heaven and heavenly- 
born — 860 
Here in perpetual agony and pain, 
With terrors and with clamours compassed 

round 
Of mine own brood, that on my bowels 

feed? 
Thou art my father, thou my author, thou 
My being gav'st me; whom should I obey 
But thee ? whom follow ? Thou wilt bring 

me soon 
To that new world of light and bliss, among 
The gods who live at ease, where I shall 

reign 
At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems 
Thy daughter and thy darling, without 
end." 870 

Thus saying, from her side the fatal key, 
Sad instrument of all our woe, she took; 
And, toward the gate rowling her bestial 

train, 
Forthwith the huge porcullis high up-drew, 
Which, but herself, not all the Stygian 

Powers 
Could once have moved; then in the key- 
hole turns 
The intricate wards, and every bolt and bar 
Of massy iron or solid rock with ease 
Unfastens. On a sudden open fly, 
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, 880 
The infernal doors, and on their hinges 

grate 
Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom 

shook 
Of Erebus. She opened; but to shut 
Excelled her power: the gates wide open 

stood, 
That with extended wings a bannered host, 
Under spread ensigns marching, might pass 

through 
With horse and chariots ranked in loose 

array ; 
So wide they stood, and like a furnace- 
mouth 
Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy 
flame. 88q 



Before their eyes in sudden view appear 
The secrets of the hoary Deep — a dark 
Illimitable ocean, without bound, 
Without dimension; where length, breadth, 

and highth, 
And time, and place, are lost; where eld- 
est Night 
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold 
Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise 
Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. 
For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four cham- 
pions fierce, 
Strive here for maistrie, and to battle bring 
Their embryon atoms : they around the 

flag 900 

Of each his faction, in their several clans, 
Light-armed or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift, 

or slow, 
Swarm populous, unnumbered as the sands 
Of Barca or Cyrene's torrid soil, 
Levied to side with warring winds, and 

poise 
Their lighter wings. To whom these most 

adhere 
He rules a moment: Chaos umpire sits, 
And by decision more imbroils the fray 
By which he reigns: next him, high arbiter, 
Chance governs all. Into this wild Abyss, 
The womb of Nature, and perhaps her 

grave, 911 

Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire, 
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed 
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, 
Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain 
His dark materials to create more worlds — 
Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend 
Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a 

while, 
Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith 
He had to cross. Nor was his ear less 

pealed 920 

With noises loud and ruinous (to compare 
Great things with small) than when Bellona 

storms 
With all her battering engines, bent to rase 
Some capital city; or less than if this frame 
Of heaven were falling, and these elements 
In mutiny had from her axle torn 
The steadfast Earth. At last his sail-broad 

vans 
He spreads for flight, and, in the surging 

smoke 
Uplifted, spurns the ground; thence many 

a league, 
As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides 930 



126 



PARADISE LOST 



Audacious ; but, that seat soon failing, meets 
A vast vacuity. All unawares, 
Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down 

he drops 
Ten thousand fadom deep, and to this hour 
Down had been falling, had not, by ill 

chance, 
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous 

cloud, 
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him 
As many miles aloft. That fury stayed — 
Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea, 
Nor good dry laud — nigh foundered, on 

he fares, 940 

Treading the crude consistence, half on 

foot, 
Half flying; behoves him now both oar and 

sail. 
As when a gryfon through the wilderness 
With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale, 
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth 
Had from his wakeful custody purloined 
The guarded gold; so eagerly the Fiend 
O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, 

dense, or rare, 
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues 

his way, 
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, 

or flies. 950 

At length a universal hubbub wild 
Of stunning sounds, and voices all confused, 
Borne through the hollow dark, assaults his 

ear 
With loudest vehemence. Thither he plies 
Undaunted, to meet there whatever Power 
Or Spirit of the nethermost Abyss 
Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask 
Which way the nearest coast of darkness 

lies 
Bordering on light; when straight behold 

the throne 
Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread 960 
Wide on the wasteful Deep ! With him 

enthroned 
Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things, 
The consort of his reign; and by them stood 
Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name 
Of Demogorgon ; Rumour next, and 

Chance, 
And Tumult, and Confusion, all imbroiled, 
And Discord with a thousand various 

mouths. 
To whom Satan, turning boldly, thus: — 

"Ye Powers 
And Spirits of this nethermost Abyss, 



Chaos and ancient Night, I come no spy 970 
With purpose to explore or to disturb 
The secrets of your realm; but, by con- 
straint 
Wandering this darksome desart, as my 

way 
Lies through your spacious empire up to 

light, 
Alone and without guide, half lost, I seek, 
What readiest path leads where your 

gloomy bounds 
Confine with Heaven; or, if some other 

place, 
From your dominion won, the Ethereal 

King 
Possesses lately, thither to arrive 
I travel this profound. Direct my 
course : 980 

Directed, no mean recompense it brings 
To your behoof, if I that region lost, 
All usurpation thence expelled, reduce 
To her original darkness and your sway 
(Which is my present journey), and once 

more 
Erect the standard there of ancient Night. 
Yours be the advantage all, mine the re- 
venge ! " 
Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old, 
With faltering speech and visage incom- 

posed, 
Answered: — "I know thee, stranger, who 
thou art — 99° 

That mighty leading Angel, who of late 
Made head against Heaven's King, though 

overthrown. 
I saw and heard; for such a numerous host 
Fled not in silence through the frighted 

Deep, 
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, 
Confusion worse confounded; and Heaven- 
gates 
Poured out by millions her victorious bands, 
Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here 
Keep residence; if all I can will serve 
That little which is left so to defend, 1000 
Encroached on still through our intestine 

broils 
Weakening the sceptre of old Night: first, 

Hell, 
Your dungeon, stretching far and wide be- 
neath ; 
Now lately Heaven and Earth, another 

world 
Hung o'er my realm, linked in a golden 
chain 



BOOK THIRD 



127 



To that side Heaven from whence your le- 
gions fell ! 

If that way be your walk, you have not far; 

So much the nearer danger. Go, and 
speed; 

Havoc, and spoil, and ruin, are my gain." 
He ceased; and Satan staid not to re- 
ply, IOIO 

But, glad that now his sea should find a 

shore, 
With fresh alacrity and force renewed 
Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire, 
Into the wild expanse, and through the 

shock 
Of fighting elements, on all sides round 
Environed, wins his way ; harder beset 
And more endangered than when Argo 

passed 
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling 

rocks, 
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned 
Charybdis, and by the other Whirlpool 

steered. 1020 

So he with difficulty and labour hard 
Moved on. With difficulty and labour he ; 
But, he once passed, soon after, when Man 

fell, 
Strange alteration ! Sin and Death amain, 
Following his track (such was the will of 

Heaven) 
Paved after him a broad and beaten way 
Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling gulf 
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous 

length, 
From Hell continued, reaching the utmost 

Orb 



Of this frail World; by which the Spirits 
perverse 1030 

With easy intercourse pass to and fro 
To tempt or punish mortals, except whom 
God and good Angels guard by special 
grace. 
But now at last the sacred influence 
Of light appears, and from the walls of 

Heaven 
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night 
A glimmering dawn. Here Nature first 

begins 
Her fardest verge, and Chaos to retire, 
As from her outmost works, a broken foe, 
With tumult less and with less hostile din; 
That Satan with less toil, and now with 
ease, 1041 

Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious 

light, 
And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds 
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle 

torn; 
Or in the emptier waste, resembling air, 
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to be- 
hold 
Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended 

wide 
In circuit, undetermined square or round, 
With opal towers and battlements adorned 
Of living sapphire, once his native seat, 1050 
And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain, 
This pendent World, in bigness as a star 
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon. 
Thither, full fraught with mischievous re- 
venge, 
Accurst, and in a cursed hour, he hies. 



BOOK III 



THE ARGUMENT 



God, sitting on his throne, sees Satan flying towards 
this World, then newly created; shews him to the Son, 
who sat at his right hand ; foretells the success of Satan 
in perverting mankind ; clears his own Justice and Wis- 
dom from all imputation, having created Man free, and 
able enough to have withstood his Tempter ; yet de- 
clares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he 
fell not of his own malice, as did Satan, but by him 
seduced. The Son of God renders praises to his Father 
for the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards 
Man : but God again declares that Grace cannot be ex- 
tended towards Man without the satisfaction of Divine 
Justice; Man hath offended the majesty of God by 
aspiring to Godhead, and therefore, with all his pro- 
geny, devoted to death, must die, unless some one can 
be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo 
his punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself 
a ransom for Man : the Father accepts him, ordains his 



incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all Names 
in Heaven and Earth ; commands all the Angels to adore 
him. They obey, and, hymning to their harps in full 
quire, celebrate the Father and the Son. Meanwhile 
Satan alights upon the bare convex of this World's 
outermost orb ; where wandering he first finds a place 
since called the Limbo of Vanity ; what persons and 
things fly up thither : thence comes to the gate of Hea- 
ven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above 
the firmament that flow about it. His passage tlience 
to the orb of the Sun : he finds there Uriel, the regent 
of that orb, but first changes himself into the shape of 
a meaner Angel, and, pretending a zealous desire to be- 
hold the new Creation, and Man whom God had placed 
here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is 
directed : Alights first on Mount Niphates. 



Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven 
__ first-born ! 

Or of the Eternal coeternal beam ^-V 

May I express thee unblained ? since God 
is light, 



28 



PARADISE LOST 



And never but in unapproached light 
Dwelt from eternity — dwelt then in thee, 
Bright effluence of bright essence increate ! 
Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal 

Stream, 
Whose fountain who shall tell ? Before 

the Sun, 
Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the 

voice 
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest 10 
The rising World of waters dark and deep, 
Won from the void and formless Infinite ! 
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, 
Escaped the Stygian Pool, though long de- 
tained 
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight, 
Through utter and through middle Dark- 
ness borne, 
i With other notes than to the Orphean lyre 
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, 
Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture 

down 
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend, 20 
Though hard and rare. Thee I revisit 

safe, 
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou 
Revisit'st not these eyes, that rowl in vain 
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; 
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their 

orbs, 
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more 
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt 
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, 
Smit with the love of sacred song; but 

chief 
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks be- 
neath, 30 
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling 

flow, 
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget 
Those other two equalled with me in fate, 
(So were I equalled with them in renown !) 
Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, 
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old: 
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird 
Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid, 
Tunes her nocturnal note, j Thus with the 
year 4 f 

Seasons return; but not to me returns 
Day, or the sweet approach of even or 

morn, 
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's 

rose, 
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine 



But cloud instead and ever-during dark 
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of 

men 
Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge 

fair, 
Presented with a universal blank 
Of Nature's works, to me expunged and 

rased, 
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut 

out. 50" 

So much the rather thou, Celestial Light, 
Shine inward, and the mind through all her 

powers 
Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from 

thence 
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell 
Of things invisible to mortal sight. 

Now had the Almighty Father from 

above, 
From the pure Empyrean where He sits 
High throned above all highth, bent down 

his eye, 
His own works and their works at once to 

view: 
About him all the Sanctities of Heaven 60 
Stood thick as stars, and from his sight re- 
ceived 
Beatitude past utterance ; on his right 
The radiant image of his glory sat, 
His only Son. On Earth he first beheld 
Our two first parents, yet the only two 
Of mankind, in the Happy Garden placed, 
Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, 
Uninterrupted joy, unrivalled love, 
In blissful solitude. He then surveyed 
Hell and the gulf between, and Satan 

there 70 

Coasting the wall of Heaven on this side 

Night, 
In the dun air sublime, and ready now 
To stoop, with wearied wings and willing 

feet, 
On the bare outside of this World, that 

seemed 
Firm land imbosomed without firmament, 
Uncertain which, in ocean or in air. 
Him God beholding from his prospect high, 
Wherein past, present, future, he beholds, 
Thus to His only Son foreseeing spake : — 
" Only - begotten Son, seest thou what 

rage 80 

Transports our Adversary ? whom no 

bounds 
I Prescribed, no bars of Hell, nor all the 

chains 



BOOK THIRD 



129 



Heaped on him there, nor yet the main 

Abyss 
Wide interrupt, can hold; so bent he seems 
On desperate revenge, that shall redound 
Upon his own rebellious head. And now, 
Through all restraint broke loose, he wings 

his way 
Not far off Heaven, in the precincts of 

light, 
Directly towards the new-created World, 
And Man there placed, with purpose to 



If him by force he can destroy, or, worse, 
By some false guile pervert : and shall 

pervert; 
For Man will hearken to his glozing lies, 
And easily transgress the sole command, 
Sole pledge of his obedience: so will fall 
He and his faithless progeny. Whose fault ? 
Whose but his own ?, .. Jngrate, he had of me 
/ All he could have; I made him just and 
U right, 

v Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. 
Such I created all the Ethereal Powers "100 
And Spirits, both them who stood and them 

who failed; 
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who 

fell. 
Not free, what proof could they have given 

sincere 
Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love, 
Where only what they needs must do ap- 
peared, 
Not what they would ? What praise could 

they receive, 
What pleasure I, from such obedience 

paid, 
When Will and Reason (Reason also is 

Choice), 
Useless and vain, of freedom both de- 
spoiled, 
Made passive both, had served Necessity, 
Not Me ? They, therefore, as to right be- 
longed in 
So were created, nor can justly accuse 
Their Maker, or their making, or their fate, 
As if Predestination overruled 
Their will, disposed by absolute decree 
Or high foreknowledge. They themselves 

decreed 
Their own revolt, not I. If I foreknew, 
Foreknowledge had no influence on their 

fault, 
Which had no less proved certain unfore- 
known. 



So without least impulse or shadow of fate, 
Or aught by me immutably foreseen, 121 
They trespass, authors to themselves in 

all, 
Both what they judge and what they choose ; 

for so 
I formed them free, and free they must re- 
main 
Till they enthrall themselves: I else must 

change 
Their nature, and revoke the high decree 
"nchangeable, eternal, which ordained 
heir freedom; they themselves ordained 
their fall. 
The first sort by their own suggestion fell, 
Self-tempted, self-depraved ; Man falls, de- 
ceived 130 
1 By the other first: Man, therefore, shall 

find grace ; 
»The other, none. In mercy and justice 

both, 
V Through Heaven and Earth, so shall my 
I glory excel; 

But mercy, first and last, shall brightest 
shine. " ^ — —"""'"" 

Thus while God spake ambrosial fra- 
grance filled — X _ 
All Heaven, and m the blessed Spirits elect 
Sense of new joy ineffable diffused. 
Beyond compare the Son of God was seen 
Most glorious; in him all his Father shon 
Substantially expressed; and in his face 140 
Divine compassion visibly appeared, 
Love without end, and without measure 

grace ; 
Which uttering, thus He to his Father 
spake : — 
" O Father, gracious was that word which 
closed 
Thy sovran sentence, that Man should find 



grace ; 
For which both Heaven and Earth shall 

high extol 
Thy praises, with the innumerable sound 
Of hymns and sacred songs, wherewith thy 

throne 
Encompassed shall resound thee ever blest. 
For, should Man finally be lost — should 

Man, 150 

Thy creature late so loved, thy youngest 

son, 
Fall circumvented thus by fraud, though 

joined 
With his own folly ! That be from 

thee far, 



13° 



PARADISE LOST 



1 « 



That far be from thee, Father, who art 

judge 
Of all things made, and judgest only right ! 
Or shall the Adversary thus obtain 
His end, and frustrate thine ? Shall he 

fulfil 
His malice, and thy goodness bring to 

naught 
Or proud return, though to his heavier 

doom 
Yet with revenge accomplished, and to 
Hell 160 

Draw after him the whole race of mankind, 
By him corrupted ? Or wilt thou thyself 
Abolish thy creation, and unmake, 
For him, what for thy glory thou hast 

made ? — 
So should thy goodness and thy greatness 

both 
Be questioned and blasphemed without de- 
fence." 
To whom the great Creator thus re- 
plied: — 
" O Son, in whom my soul hath chief de- 
light, 
Son of my bosom, Son who art alone 169 
My word, my wisdom, and effectual might, 
All hast thou spoken as my thoughts are, 

all 
As my eternal purpose hath decreed. 
Man shall not quite be lost, but saved who 

will; 
Yet not of will in him, but grace in me 
Freely voutsafed. Once more I will renew 
His lapsed powers, though forfeit, and en- 
thralled 
By sin to foul exorbitant desires: 
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand 
On even ground against his mortal foe — 
By me upheld, that he may know how 
frail 180 

His fallen condition is, and to me owe 
All his deliverance, and to none but me. 
Some I have chosen of peculiar grace, 
Elect above the rest; so is my will: 
The rest shall hear me call, and oft be 

warned 
Their sinful state, and to appease betimes 
The incensed Deity, while offered grace 
Invites; for I will clear their senses dark 
What may suffice, and soften stony hearts 
To pray, repent, and bring obedience due. 
To prayer, repentance, and obedience due, 
Though but endeavoured with sincere in- 
tent, 192 



Mine ear shall not be slow, mine eye not 
shut. 

And I will place within them as a guide 

My umpire Conscience; whom if they will 
hear, 

Light after light well used they shall at- 
tain, 

And to the end persisting safe arrive. 

This my long sufferance, and my day of 
grace, 

They who neglect and scorn shall never 
taste ; 

But hard be hardened, blind be blinded 



That they may stumble on, and deeper fall; 
And none but such from mercy I ex- 
clude. 

But yet all is not done. Man disobeying, 
Disloyal, breaks his fealty, and sins 
Against the high supremacy of Heaven, 
Affecting Godhead, and, so losing all, 
To expiate his treason hath naught left, 
But, to destruction sacred and devote, 
He with his whole posterity must die; — 
Die he or Justice must; unless for him 210 
Some other, able, and as willing, pay 
The rigid satisfaction, death for death. 
Say, Heavenly Powers, where shall we find 

such love ? 
Which of ye will be mortal, to redeem 
Man's mortal crime, and just, the unjust to 

save ? 
Dwells in all Heaven charity so dear ?" 
He asked, but all the Heavenly Quire 
stood mute, 
And silence was in Heaven: on Man's b 

half 
Patron or intercessor none appeared — 
Much less that durst upon his own t b 



draw 

The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set. 
And now without redemption all mankind 
Must have beeu lost, adjudged to Death 

and Hell 
By doom severe, had not the Son of God, 
In whom the fulness dwells of love divine, 
His dearest mediation thus renewed: — 
" Father, thy word is passed, Man shall 
find grace; 
And shall Grace not find means, that finds 

her way, 
The speediest of thy winged messengers, 
To visit all thy creatures, and to all 230 
Comes unprevented, unimplored, un- 
sought ? 



BOOK THIRD 



131 



Happy for Man, so coming ! He her aid 
Can never seek, once dead in sins and 

lost — 
Atonement for himself, or offering meet, 
Indebted and undone, hath none to bring. 
Behold me, then: me for him, life for life, 
I offer; on me let thine anger fall; 
Account me Man : I for his sake will leave 
Thy bosom, and this glory next to thee 
Freely put off, and for him lastly die 240 
Well pleased; on me let Death wreak all 

his rage. 
Under his gloomy power I shall not long 
Lie vanquished. Thou hast given me to 



Life in myself for ever; by thee I live; 

Though now to Death I yield, and am his 
due, 

All that of me can die, yet, that debt paid, 

Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome 
grave 

His prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul 

For ever with corruption there to dwell; 

But I shall rise victorious, and subdue 250 

My vanquisher, spoiled of his vaunted spoil. 

Death his death's wound shall then receive, 
and stoop 

Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarmed; 

I through the ample air in triumph high 

Shall lead Hell captive maugre Hell, and 
show 

The powers of Darkness bound. Thou, at 
the sight 

Pleased, out of Heaven shalt look down and 
smile, 

WJjile, by thee raised, I ruin all my foes — 

•Jjfc|th last, and with his carcase glut the 

4 grave; 259 

Hen, with the multitude of my redeemed, 

Snail enter Heaven, long absent, and re- 
turn, 

Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud / 

Of anger shall remain, but peace assured 

And reconcilement: wrauth shall be no 
more 

Thenceforth, but in thy presence joy en- 
tire." 
His words here ended; but his meek as- 
pect' 

Silent yet spake, and breathed immortal 
love 

To mortal men, above which only shon 

Filial obedience: as a sacrifice 

Glad to be offered, he attends the will 270 

Of his great Father. Admiration seized 



All Heaven, what this might mean, and 

whither tend, 
Wondering; but soon the Almighty thus 

replied : — 
" O thou in Heaven and Earth the only 

peace 
Found out for mankind under wrauth, O 

thou 
My sole complacence ! well thou know'st 

how dear 
To me are all my works ; nor Man the least, 
Though last created, that for him I spare 
Thee from my bosom and right hand, to 

save, 279 

By losing thee a while, the whole race lost ! 
Thou, therefore, whom thou only canst re- 
deem, 
Their nature also to thy nature join; 
And be thyself Man among men on Earth, 
Made flesh, when time shall be, of virgin 

seed, 
By wondrous birth; be thou in Adam's 

room 
The head of all mankind, though Adam's 

son. 
As in him perish all men, so in thee, 
As from a second root, shall be restored 
As many as are restored; without thee, 

none. 
His crime makes guilty all his sons; thy 

merit, 290 

Imputed, shall absolve them who renounce 
Their own both righteous and unrighteous 

deeds, 
And live in thee transplanted, and from 

thee 
Receive new life. So Man, as is most just, 
Shall satisfy for Man, be judged and die, 
And dying rise, and, rising, with him raise 
His brethren, ransomed with his own dear 
jr-~ life. 

' So Heavenly love shall outdo Hellish hat 
Giving to death, and dying to redeem, 
Sodearly to redeem what Hellish hate 300 
So easily destroyed, and still destroys 
In those who, when they may, accept not 

grace. 
Nor shalt thou, by descending to assume 
Man's nature, lessen or degrade thine own. 
Because thou hast, though throned in high- 
est bliss 
Equal to God, and equally enjoying 
God-like fruition, quitted all to save 
A world from utter loss, and hast been 

found 




132 



PARADISE LOST 



By merit more than birthright Son of 

God,— 
Found worthiest to be so by being good, 310 
Far more than great or high; because in 

thee 
Love hath abounded more than glory 

abounds ; 
Therefore thy humiliation shall exalt 
With thee thy manhood also to this Throne : 
Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt 

reign 
Both God and Man, Son both of God and 

Man, 
Anointed universal King. All power 
I give thee; reign for ever, and assume 
Thy merits; under thee, as Head Supreme, 
Thrones, Princedoms, Powers, Dominions, 

I reduce: 320 

All knees to thee shall bow of them that 

bide 
In Heaven, or Earth, or, under Earth, in 

Hell. 
When thou, attended gloriously from Hea- 
ven, 
Shalt in the sky appear, and from thee 

send 
The summoning Archangels to proclaim 
Thy dread tribunal, forthwith from all 

winds 
The living, and forthwith the cited dead 
Of all past ages, to the general doom 
Shall hasten; such a peal shall rouse their 

sleep. 
Then, all thy Saints assembled, thou shalt 

judge 330 

Bad men and Angels; they arraigned shall 

sink 
Beneath thy sentence; Hell, her numbers 

full, 
Thenceforth shall be for ever shut. Mean- 
while 
The World shall burn, and from her ashes 

spring 
New Heaven and Earth, wherein the just 

shall dwell, 
And, after all their tribulations long, 
See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds, 
With Joy and Love triumph'ing, and fair 

Truth. 
Then thou thy regal sceptre shalt lay 

by; 

For regal sceptre then no more shall need; 
God shall be All in All. But all ye Gods, 
Adore Him who, to compass all this, dies; 
Adore the Son, and honour him as me." 343 



No sooner had the Almighty ceased but 

— all 
The multitude of Angels, with a shout 
Loud as from numbers without number, 

sweet 
As from blest voices, uttering joy — Hea- 
ven rung 
With jubilee, and loud hosannas filled 
The eternal regions. Lowly reverent 
Towards either throne they bow, and to the 

ground 35 o 

With solemn adoration down they cast 
Their crowns, inwove with amarant and 

gold, — 
Immortal amarant, a flower which once 
In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life, 
Began to bloom, but, soon for Man's offence 
To Heaven removed where first it grew, 

there grows 
And flowers aloft, shading the Fount of 

Life, 
And where the River of Bliss through midst 

of Heaven 
Howls o'er Elysian flowers her amber 

stream ! 
With these, that never fade, the Spirits 

elect 360 

Bind their resplendent locks, inwreathed 

with beams. 
Now in loose garlands thick thrown off, the 

bright 
Pavement, that like a sea of jasper shon, 
Impurpled with celestial roses smiled. 
Then, crowned again, their golden harps 

they took — 
Harps ever tuned, that glittering by their 

side 
Like quivers hung; and with prseamble 

sweet 

Of charming symphony they introduce 
Their sacred song, and waken raptures 

high: 
No voice exempt, no voice but well could 

join ^ 370 

Melodious part; such concord is in Heaven. 
Thee, Father, first they sung, Omnipo- 
tent, 
Immutable, Immortal. Infinite, 
Eternal King; thee, Author of all being, 
Fountain of light, thyself invisible 
Amidst the glorious brightness where thou 

sitt'st 
Throned inaccessible, but when thou shad'st 
The full blaze of thy beams, and through a 

cloud 



I 



BOOK THIRD 



i33 



Drawn round about thee like a radiant 

shrine 
Dark with excessive bright thy skirts ap- 
pear, 380 
Yet dazzle Heaven, that brightest Seraphim 
Approach not, but with both wings veil 

their eyes. 
Thee next they sang, of all creation first, 
Begotten Son, Divine Similitude, 
In whose conspicuous countenance, without 

cloud 
Made visible, the Almighty Father shines, 
Whom else no creature can behold : on thee 
Impressed the effulgence of his glory 

abides ; 
Transfused on thee his ample Spirit rests. 
He Heaven of Heavens, and all the Powers 

therein, 390 

By thee created; and by thee threw down 
The aspiring Dominations. Thou that day 
Thy Father's dreadful thunder didst not 

spare, 
Nor stop thy flaming chariot-wheels, that 

shook 
Heaven's everlasting frame, while o'er the 

necks 
Thou drov'st of warring Angels disarrayed. 
Back from pursuit, thy Powers with loud 

acclaim 
Thee only extolled, Son of thy Father's 

might, 
To execute fierce vengeance on his foes. 
Not so on Man: him, through their malice 

fallen, 400 

Father of mercy and grace, thou didst not 

doom 
So strictly, but much more to pity encline. 
No sooner did thy dear and only Son 
Perceive thee purposed not to doom frail 

Man 
So strictly, but much more to pity enclined, 
He, to appease thy wrauth, and end the 

strife 
Of mercy and justice in thy face discerned, 
Regardless of the bliss wherein he sat 
Second to thee, offered himself to die 409 
For Man's offence. O unexampled love ! 
Love nowhere to be found less than Divine ! 
Hail, Son of God, Saviour of men ! Thy 

name 
Shall be the copious matter of my song 
Henceforth, and never shall my harp thy 

praise 
Forget, nor from thy Father's praise dis- 
join ! 



Thus they in Heaven, above the Starry 

Sphere, 
Their happy hours in joy and hymning 

spent. 
Meanwhile, upon the firm opacous globe 
Of this round World, whose first convex 

divides 
The luminous inferior Orbs, enclosed 420 
From Chaos and the inroad of Darkness old, 
Satan alighted walks. A globe far off 
It seemed; now seems a boundless conti- 
nent, 
Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of 

Night 
Starless exposed, and ever - threatening 

storms 
Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky, 
Save on that side which from the wall of 

Heaven, 
Though distant far, some small reflection 

gains 
Of glimmering air less vexed with tempest 

loud. 
Here walked the Fiend at large in spacious 

field. 430 

As when a vultur, on Imaus bred, 
Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar 

bounds, 
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey, 
To gorge the flesh of lambs or yeanling 

kids 
On hills where flocks are fed, flies toward 

the springs 
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams, 
But in his way lights on the barren plains 
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive 
With sails and wind their cany waggons 

light; 
So, on this windy sea of land, the Fiend 440 
Walked up and down alone, bent on his 

prey: 
Alone, for other creature in this, place, 
Living or lifeless, to be found was none ; — 
None yet; but store hereafter from the 

Earth 
Up hither like aerial vapours flew 
Of all things transitory and vain, when sin 
With vanity had filled the works of men — 
Both all things vain, and all who in vain 

things 
Built their fond hopes of glory or lasting 

fame, 
Or happiness in this or the other life. 450 
All who have their reward on earth, the 

fruits 



i34 



PARADISE LOST 



Of painful superstition and blind zeal, 
Naught seeking but the praise of men, here 

find 
Fit retribution, empty as their deeds; 
All the unaccomplished works of Nature's 

hand, 
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, 
Dissolved on Earth, fleet hither, and in 

vain, 
Till final dissolution, wander here — 
Not in the neighbouring Moon, as some 

have dreamed: 459 

Those argent fields more likely habitants, 
Translated Saints, or middle Spirits hold, 
Betwixt the angelical and human kind. 
Hither, of ill-joined sons and daughters 

born, 
First from the ancient world those Giants 

came, 
With many a vain exploit, though then re- 
nowned: 
The builders next of Babel on the plain 
Of Sennaar, and still with vain design 
New Babels, had they wherewithal, would 

build: 
Others came single ; he who, to be deemed 
A god, leaped fondly into iEtna flames, 470 
Empedocles; and he who, to enjoy 
Plato's Elysium, leaped into the sea, 
Cleombrotus; and many more, too long, 
Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars, 
White, black, and grey, with all their 

trumpery. 
Here pilgrims roam, that strayed so far to 

seek 
In Golgotha him dead who lives in Heaven; 
And they who, to be sure of Paradise, 
Dying put on the weeds of Dominic, 
Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised. 
They pass the planets seven, and pass the 

fixed, 481 

And that crystal'lin sphere whose balance 

weighs 
The trepidation talked, and that first moved; 
And now Saint Peter at Heaven's wicket 

seems 
To wait them with his keys, and now at 

foot 
Of Heaven's ascent they lift their feet, 

when, lo ! 
A violent cross wind from either coast 
Blows them transverse, ten thousand 

leagues awry, 
Into the devious air. Then might ye see 



Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wear- 
ers, tost 490 
And fluttered into rags ; thenreliques, beads, 
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, 
The sport of winds: all these, up whirled 

aloft, 
Fly o'er the backside of the World far off 
Into a Limbo large and broad, since called 
The Paradise of Fools; to few unknown 
Long after, now unpeopled and untrod. 
All this dark globe the Fiend found as 
he passed; 
And long he wandered, till at last a gleam 
Of dawning light turned thitherward in 
haste 500 

His travelled steps. Far distant he de- 
scries, 
Ascending by degrees magnificent 
Up to the wall of Heaven, a structure high; 
At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared 
The work as of a kingly palace-gate, 
With frontispice of diamond and gold 
Imbellished; thick with sparkling orient 

gems 
The portal shon, inimitable on Earth 
By model, or by shading pencil drawn. 
The stairs were such as whereon Jacob 
saw 510 

Angels ascending and descending, bands 
Of guardians bright, when he from Esau 

fled 
To Padan-Aram, in the field of Luz 
Dreaming by night under the open sky, 
And waking cried, This is the gate of Heaven. 
Each stair mysteriously was meant, nor 

stood 
There always, but drawn up to Heaven 

sometimes 
Viewless; and underneath a bright sea 

flowed 
Of jasper, or of liquid pearl, whereon 
Who after came from Earth sailing ar- 
rived 520 
Wafted by Angels, or flew o'er the lake 
Rapt in a chariot drawn by fiery steeds. 
The stairs were then let down, whether to 

dare 
The Fiend by easy ascent, or aggravate 
His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss: 
Direct against which opened from beneath, 
Just o'er the blissful seat of Paradise, 
A passage down to the Earth — a passage 

wide; 
Wider by far than that of after-times 



BOOK THIRD 



*35 



Over Mount Sion, and, though that were 

large, 53° 

Over the Promised Land to God so dear, 
By which, to visit oft those happy tribes, 
On high behests his Angels to and fro 
Passed frequent, and his eye with choice 

regard 
From Paneas, the fount of Jordan's flood, 
To Beersaba, where the Holy Land 
Borders on iEgypt and the Arabian shore. 
So wide the opening seemed, where bounds 

were set 
To darkness, such as bound the ocean 

wave. 539 

Satan from hence, now on the lower stair, 
That scaled by steps of gold to Heaven-gate, 
Looks down with wonder at the sudden 

view 
Of all this World at once. As when a scout, 
Through dark and desart ways with peril 

gone 
All night, at last by break of cheerful dawn 
Obtains the brow of some high-climbing 

hill, 
Which to his eye discovers unaware 
The goodly prospect of some foreign land 
First seen, or some renowned metropolis 
With glistering spires and pinnacles 

adorned, 550 

Which now the rising sun gilds with his 

beams; 
Such wonder seized, though after Heaven 

seen, 
The Spirit malign, but much more envy 

seized, 
At sight of all this World beheld so fair. 
Round he surveys (and well might, where 

he stood 
So high above the circling canopy 
Of Night's extended shade) from eastern 

point 
Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears 
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas 
Beyond the horizon; then from pole to 

pole 560 

He views in breadth, — and, without longer 

pause, 
Down right into the World's first region 

throws 
His flight precipitant, and winds with ease 
Through the pure marble air his oblique 

way 
Amongst innumerable stars, that shon 
Stars distant, but nigh-hand seemed other 

worlds. 



Or other worlds they seemed, or happy isles, 
Like those Hesperian Gardens famed of old, 
Fortunate fields, and groves, and flowery 

vales ; 
Thrice happy isles ! But who dwelt happy 
there 570 

He staid not to inquire: above them all 
The golden Sun, in splendour likest Hea- 
ven, 
Allured his eye. Thither his course he 

bends, 
Through the calm firmament (but up or 

down, 
By centre or eccentric, hard to tell, 
Or longitude) where the great luminary, 
Aloof the vulgar constellations thick, 
That from his lordly eye keep distance due, 
Dispenses light from far. They, as they 

move 
Their starry dance in numbers that com- 
pute 580 
Days, months, and years, towards his all- 
cheering lamp 
Turn swift their various motions, or are 

turned 
By his magnetic beam, that gently warms 
The Universe, and to each inward part 
With gentle penetration, though unseen, 
Shoots invisible virtue even to the Deep; 
So wondrously was set his station bright. 
There lands the Fiend, a spot like which 

perhaps 
Astronomer in the Sun's lucent orb 
Through his glazed optic tube yet never 
saw. 590 

The place he found beyond expression 

bright, 
Compared with aught on Earth, metal or 

stone — 
Not all parts like, but all alike informed 
With radiant light, as glowing iron with 

fire. 
If metal, part seemed gold, part silver 

clear; 
If stone, carbuncle most or chrysolite, 
Ruby or topaz, to the twelve that shon 
In Aaron's breast-plate, and a stone besides, 
Imagined rather oft than elsewhere seen — 
That stone, or like to that, which here be- 
low 600 
Philosophers in vain so long have sought; 
In vain, though by their powerful art they 

bind 
Volatile Hermes, and call up unbound 
In various shapes old Proteus from the sea, 



136 



PARADISE LOST 



Drained through a limbec to his native 

form. 
What wonder then if fields and regions 

here 
Breathe forth elixir pure, and rivers run 
Potable gold, when, with one virtuous 

touch, 
The arch-chimic Sun, so far from us re- 
mote, 609 
Produces, with terrestrial humour mixed, 
Here in the dark so many precious things 
Of colour glorious and effect so rare ? 
Here matter new to gaze the Devil met 
Undazzled. Far and wide his eye com- 
mands; 
For sight no obstacle found here, nor shade, 
But all sunshine, as when his beams at noon 
Culminate from the equator, as they now 
Shot upward still direct, whence no way 

round 
Shadow from body opaque can fall; and 

the air, 
Nowhere so clear, sharpened his visual 
ray 620 

To objects distant far, whereby he soon 
Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand, 
The same whom John saw also in the Sun. 
His back was turned, but not his brightness 

hid; 
Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar 
Circled his head, nor less his locks behind 
Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with 

wings 
Lay waving round: on some great charge 

imployed 
He seemed, or fixed in cogitation deep. 
Glad was the Spirit impure, as now in 
hope 630 

To find who might direct his wandering 

flight 
To Paradise, the happy seat of Man, 
His journey's end, and our beginning woe. 
But first he casts to change his proper 

shape, 
Which else might work him danger or de- 
lay: 
And now a stripling Cherub he appears, 
Not of the prime, yet such as in his face 
Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb 
Suitable grace diffused; so well he feigned. 
Under a coronet his flowing hair 640 

In curls on either cheek played; wings he 

wore 
Of many a coloured plume sprinkled with 
gold; 



His habit fit for speed succinct; and held 

Before his decent steps a silver wand. 

He drew not nigh unheard; the Angel 

bright, 
Ere he drew nigh, his radiant visage turned, 
Admonished by his ear, and straight was 

known 
The Archangel Uriel — one of the seven 
Who in God's presence, nearest to his 

throne, 
Stand ready at command, and are his 
eyes 650 

That rim through all the Heavens, or down 

to the Earth 
Bear his swift errands over moist and dry, 
O'er sea and land. Him Satan thus ac- 
costs : — 
" Uriel ! for thou of those seven Spirits 
that stand 
In sight of God's high throne, gloriously 

bright, 
The first art wont his great authentic will 
Interpreter through highest Heaven to 

bring. 
Where all his Sons thy embassy attend, 
And here art likeliest by supreme decree 
Like honour to obtain, and as his eye 660 
To visit oft this new Creation round — 
Unspeakable desire to see and know 
All these his wondrous works, but chiefly 

Man, 
His chief delight and favour, him for whom 
All these his works so wondrous he or- 
dained, 
Hath brought me from the quires of Cher- 
ubim 
Alone thus wandering. Brightest Seraph, 

tell 
In which of all these shining orbs hath 

Man 
His fixed seat — or fixed seat hath none, 
But all these shining orbs his choice to 
dwell — 6 7° 

That I may find him, and with secret gaze 
Or open admiration him behold 
On whom the great Creator hath bestowed 
Worlds, and on whom hath all these graces 

poured ; 
That both in him and all things, as is meet, 
The Universal Maker we may praise; 
Who justly hath driven out his rebel foes 
To deepest Hell, and, to repair that loss, 
Created this new happy race of Men 
To serve him better. Wise are all his 



ways 



f " 



680 



BOOK THIRD 



137 



So spake the false dissembler unper- 
ceived; 
For neither man nor angel can discern 
Hypocrisy — the only evil that walks 
Invisible, except to God alone, 
By his permissive will, through Heaven and 

Earth ; 
And oft, though Wisdom wake, Suspicion 

sleeps 
At Wisdom's gate, and to Simplicity 
Resigns her charge, while Goodness thinks 

no ill 
Where no ill seems: which now for once 

beguiled 
Uriel, though Regent of the Sun, and held 
The sharpest-sighted Spirit of all in Hea- 
ven; 691 
Who to the fraudulent impostor foul, 
In his uprightness, answer thus returned: — 
" Fair Angel, thy desire, which tends to 
know 
The works of God, thereby to glorify 
The great Work-maister, leads to no ex- 
cess 
That reaches blame, but rather merits 

praise 
The more it seems excess, that led thee 

hither 
From thy empyreal mansion thus alone, 
To witness with thine eyes what some per- 
haps, 700 
Contented with report, hear only in Hea- 
ven: 
For wonderful indeed are all his works, 
Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all 
Had in remembrance always with delight ! 
But what created mind can comprehend 
Their number, or the wisdom infinite 
That brought them forth, but hid their 

causes deep ? 
I saw when, at his word, the formless 

mass, 
This World's material mould, came to a 

heap: 
Confusion heard his voice, and wild Up- 
roar 710 
Stood ruled, stood vast Infinitude confined; 
Till, at his second bidding, Darkness fled, 



Light shon, and order from disorder 
sprung. 

Swift to their several quarters hasted then 

The cumbrous elements — Earth, Flood, 
Air, Fire; 

And this ethereal quintessence of Heaven 

Flew upward, spirited with various forms, 

That rowled orbicular, and turned to stars 

Numberless, as thou seest, and how they 
move : 

Each had his place appointed, each his 
course; 720 

The rest in circuit walls this Universe. 

Look downward on that globe, whose hither 
side 

With light from hence, though but reflected, 
shines: 

That place is Earth, the seat of Man; that 
light 

His day, which else, as the other hemi- 
sphere, 

Night would invade; but there the neigh- 
bouring Moon 

(So call that opposite fair star) her aid 

Timely interposes, and, her monthly round 

Still ending, still renewing, through mid- 
heaven, 

With borrowed light her countenance tri- 
form 730 

Hence fills and empties, to enlighten the 
Earth, 

And in her pale dominion checks the night. 

That spot to which I point is Paradise, 

Adam's abode ; those lofty shades his bower. 

Thy way thou canst not miss; me mine re- 
quires." 
Thus said, he turned ; and Satan, bowing 
low, 

As to superior Spirits is wont in Heaven, 

Where honour due and reverence none neg- 
lects, 

Took leave, and toward the coast of Earth 
beneath, 

Down from the ecliptic, sped with hoped 
success, 740 

Throws his steep flight in many an aerie 
wheel, 

Nor staid till on Niphates' top he lights. 



138 



PARADISE LOST 



BOOK IV 

THE ARGUMENT 

Satan, now in prospect of Eden, and nigh the place 
where he must now attempt the bold enterprise which 
he undertook alone against God and Man, falls into 
many doubts with himself, and many passions— fear, 
envy, and despair ; but at length confirms himself in 
evil ; journeys on to Paradise, whose outward prospect 
and situation is described ; overleaps the bounds ; sits, 
in the shape of a Cormorant, on the Tree of Life, as 
highest in the Garden, to look about him. The Garden 
described ; Satan's first sight of Adam and Eve ; his 
wonder at their excellent form and happy state, but 
with resolution to work their fall ; overhears their dis- 
course ; thence gathers that the Tree of Knowledge was 
forbidden them to eat of under penalty of death, and 
thereon intends to found his temptation by seducing 
them to transgress ; then leaves them a while, to know 
further of their state by some other means. Meanwhile 
Uriel, descending on a sunbeam, warns Gabriel, who had 
in charge the gate of Paradise, that some evil Spirit 
had escaped the Deep, and passed at noon by his Sphere, 
in the shape of a good Angel, down to Paradise, dis- 
covered after by his furious gestures in the Mount. 
Gabriel promises to find him ere morning. Night com- 
ing on, Adam and Eve discourse of going to their rest : 
their bower described ; their evening worship. Gabriel, 
drawing forth his bands of night-watch to walk the 
rounds of Paradise, appoints two strong Angels to 
Adam's bower, lest the evil Spirit should be there doing 
some harm to Adam or Eve sleeping : there they find 
him at the ear of Eve, tempting her in a dream, and 
bring him, though unwilling, to Gabriel; by whom 
questioned, he scornfully answers ; prepares resistance ; 
but, hindered by a sign from Heaven, flies out of Para- 
dise. 

O for that warning voice, which he who 

saw 
The Apocalypse heard cry in Heaven aloud, 
Then when the Dragon, put to second rout, 
Came furious down to be revenged on men, 
Woe to the inhabitants on Earth I that now, 
While time was, our first parents had been 

warned 
The coming of their secret Foe, and scaped, 
Haply so scaped, his mortal snare ! For 

now 
Satan, now first inflamed with rage, came 

down, 9 

The tempter, ere the accuser, of mankind, 
To wreak on innocent frail Man his loss 
Of that first battle, and his flight to Hell. 
Yet not rejoicing in his speed, though bold 
Far off and fearless, nor with cause to 

boast, 
Begins his dire attempt; which, nigh the 

birth 
Now rowling, boils in his tumultuous 

breast, 
And like a devilish engine back recoils 
Upon himself. Horror and doubt distract 



His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom 

stir 
The hell within him; for within him Hell 
He brings, and round about him, nor from 

Hell 
One step, no more than from himself, can 

fly 

By change of place. Now conscience wakes 
despair 

That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory 

Of what he was, what is, and what must 
be 

Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings 
must ensue ! 

Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his 
view 

Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad; 

Sometimes towards Heaven and the full- 
blazing Sun, 

Which now sat high in his meridian tower: 

Then, much revolving, thus in sighs be- 
gan:— _ 3 i 
" O thou that, with surpassing glory 
crowned, 

Look'st from thy sole dominion like the 
god 

Of this new World — at whose sight all the 
stars 

Hide their diminished heads — to thee I 
call, 

But with no friendly voice, and add thy 
name, 

Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams, 
That bring to my remembrance from what 

state 

1 fell, how glorious once above thy sphere, 
Till pride and worse ambition threw me 

down, 40 

Warring in Heaven against Heaven's 

matchless King ! 
Ah, wherefore ? He deserved no such re- 
turn 
From me, whom he created what I was 
In that bright eminence, and with his good 
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard. 
What could be less than to afford him 

praise, 
The easiest recompense, and pay him 

thanks, 
How due ? Yet all his good proved ill in 

me, 
And wrought but malice. Lifted up so 

high, 
I 'sdained subjection, and thought one step 

higher 50 



BOOK FOURTH 



i39 



Would set me highest, and in a moment 

quit 
The debt immense of endless gratitude, 
So burthensome, still paying, still to owe; 
Forgetful what from him I still received; 
And understood not that a grateful mind 
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once 
Indebted and discharged — what burden 

then? 
Oh, had his powerful destiny ordained 
Me some inferior Angel, I had stood 
Then happy; no unbounded hope had 

raised 60 

Ambition. Yet why not ? Some other 

Power 
As great might have aspired, and me, 

though mean, 
Drawn to his part. But other Powers as 

great 
Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within 
Or from without to all temptations armed ! 
Hadst thou the same free will and power 

to stand ? 
Thou hadst. Whom hast thou then, or 

what, to accuse, 
But Heaven's free love dealt equally to all ? 
Be then his love accursed, since, love or 

hate, 
To me alike it deals eternal woe. 70 

Nay, cursed be thou; since against his thy 

will 
Chose freely what it now so justly rues. 
Me miserable ! which way shall I fly 
Infinite wrauth and infinite despair ? 
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; 
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep 
Still threatening to devour me opens wide, 
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven. 
O, then, at last relent ! Is there no place 
Left for repentance, none for pardon left ? 
None left but by submission; and that word 
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame 
Among the Spirits beneath, whom I seduced 
With other promises and other vaunts 
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue 
The Omnipotent. Ay me ! they little know 
How dearly I abide that boast so vain, 
Under what torments inwardly I groan. 
While they adore me on the throne of Hell, 
With diadem and sceptre high advanced, 90 
The lower still I fall, only supreme 
In misery: such joy ambition finds ! 
But say I could repent, and could obtain, 
By act of grace, my former state ; how 

soon 



Would highth recal high thoughts, how 

soon unsay 
What feigned submission swore ! Ease 

would recant 
Vows made in pain, as violent and void 
(For never can true reconcilement grow 
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced 

so deep) ; 
Which would but lead me to a worse re- 
lapse 100 
And heavier fall: so should I purchase dear 
Short intermission, bought with double 

smart. 
This knows my Punisher; therefore as far 
From granting he, as I from begging, 

peace. 
All hope excluded thus, behold, instead 
Of us, outcast, exiled, his new delight, 
Mankind, created, and for him this World ! 
So farewell hope, and, with hope, farewell 

fear, 108 

Farewell remorse ! All good to me is lost; 
Evil, be thou my Good: by thee at least 
Divided empire with Heaven's King I hold, 
By thee, and more than half perhaps will 

reign; 
As Man ere long, and this new World, 

shall know." 
Thus while he spake, each passion 

dimmed his face, 
Thrice changed with pale — ire, envy, and 

despair; 
Which marred his borrowed visage, and be- 
trayed 
Him counterfeit, if any eye beheld : 
For Heavenly minds from such distempers 

foul 
Are ever clear. Whereof he soon aware 
Each perturbation smoothed with outward 

calm, 120 

Artificer of fraud; and was the first 
That practised falsehood under saintly 

shew, 
Deep malice to conceal, couched with re- 
venge : 
Yet not enough had practised to deceive 
Uriel, once warned; whose eye pursued 

him down 
The way he went, and on the Assyrian 

mount 
Saw him disfigured, more than could befall 
Spirit of happy sort: his gestures fierce 
He marked and mad demeanour, then 

alone, 
As he supposed, all unobserved, unseen. 130 



140 



PARADISE LOST 



So on he fares, and to the border comes 
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, 
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure 

green, 
As with a rural mound, the champain head 
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides 
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and 

wild, 
Access denied; and overhead up-grew 
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade, 
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching 

palm, 
A sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend 140 
Shade above shade, a woody theatre 
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their 

tops 
The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung; 
Which to our general Sire gave prospect 

large 
Into his nether empire neighbouring round. 
And higher than that wall a circling row 
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit, 
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden 

hue, 
Appeared, with gay enamelled colours 

mixed; 
On which the sun more glad impressed his 

beams 150 

Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow, 
When God hath showered the earth: so 

lovely seemed 
That lantskip. And of pure now purer air 
Meets his approach, and to the heart in- 
spires 
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive 
All sadness but despair. Now gentle gales, 
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense 
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they 

stole 
Those balmy spoils. As, when to them who 

sail 
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are 

past 160 

Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow 
Sabean odours from the spicy shore 
Of Araby the Blest, with such delay 
Well pleased they slack their course, and 

many a league 
Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean 

smiles; 
So entertained those odorous sweets the 

Fiend 
Who came their bane, though with them 

better pleased 
Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume 



That drove him, though enamoured, from 

the spouse 
Of Tobit's son, and with a vengeance 

sent 170 

From Media post to iEgypt, there fast 

bound. 
Now to the ascent of that steep savage 

Satan had journeyed on, pensive and slow; 

But further way found none; so thick en- 
twined, 

As one continued brake, the undergrowth 

Of shrubs and tangling bushes had per- 
plexed 

All path of man or beast that passed that 
way. 

One gate there only was, and that looked 
east 

On the other side. Which when the Arch- 
Felon saw, 

Due entrance he disdained, and, in con- 
tempt, 180 

At one slight bound high overleaped all 
bound 

Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within 

Lights on his feet. As when a prowling 
wolf, 

Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for 
prey, 

Watching where shepherds pen their flocks 
at eve, 

In hurdled cotes amid the field secure, 

Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fold; 

Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash 

Of some rich burgher, whose substantial 
doors, 

Cross-barred and bolted fast, fear no as- 
sault, 190 

In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles; 

So clomb this first grand Thief into God's 
fold: 

So since into his Church lewd hirelings 
climb. 

Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life, 

The middle tree and highest there that 
grew, 

Sat like a Cormorant; yet not true life 

Thereby regained, but sat devising death 

To them who lived; nor on the virtue 
thought 

Of that life-giving plant, but only used 

For prospect what, well used, had been the 
pledge 200 

Of immortality. So little knows 

Any, but God alone, to value right 



BOOK FOURTH 



141 



The good before him, but perverts best 

things 
To worst abuse, or to their meanest use. 
Beneath him, with new wonder, now he 

views, 
To all delight of human sense exposed, 
In narrow room Nature's whole wealth; 

yea, more ! — 
A Heaven on Earth : for blissful Paradise 
Of God the garden was, by him in the east 
Of Eden planted. Eden stretched her 

line 210 

From Auran eastward to the royal towers 
Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian kings, 
Or where the sons of Eden long before 
Dwelt in Telassar. In this pleasant soil 
His far more pleasant garden God ordained. 
Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow 
All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, 

taste ; 
And all amid them stood the Tree of Life, 
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit 
Of vegetable gold; and next to life, 220 
Our death, the Tree of Knowledge, grew 

fast by — 
Knowledge of good, bought dear by know- 
ing ill. 
Southward through Eden went a river 

large, 
Nor changed his course, but through the 

shaggy hill 
Passed underneath ingulfed; for God had 

thrown 
That mountain, as his garden-mould, high 

raised 
Upon the rapid current, which, through 

veins 
Of porous earth with kindly thirst up- 
drawn, 
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill 
Watered the garden; thence unitedjell 230 
Down the steep glade, anoTmeflilie nether 

flood, 
Which from his darksome 



appears, 
And now, divided into four main streams, 
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous 

realm 
And country whereof here needs no account; 
But rather to tell how, if Art could tell 
How, from that sapphire fount the crisped 

brooks; 

Rowling on orient pearl and sands of gold, 
With mazy error under pendent shades 
>\ Ran nectar, jmiting each plant, and fed 2 4<> 



Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice 

Art 
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon 
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and 

plain, 
Both where the morning sun first warmly 

smote 
The open field, and where the unpierced 

shade 
Imbrowned the noontide bowers. Thus 

was this place, 
A happy rural seat of various view: 
JGroves whose rich trees wept odorous gums 

and balm; 
|)thers whose fruit, burnished with golden 

rind, _, 

Hung amiable — Hesperian fables true, 250 
If true, here only — and of delicious taste. 
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and 

flocks 
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed, 
Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap 
Of some irriguous valley spread her store, 
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the 

rose. 
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves 
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine 
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently 

creeps 
Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters 

fall 260 

Down the slope hills dispersed, or in a lake, 
That to the fringed bank with myrtle 

crowned 
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their 

streams. 
The birds their quire apply ;^airs, vernal 

airs, 
Breathing the smell of field and grove, at- 
tune 
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, 
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in 

dance, 
Led on the eternal Spring. Not that fair 

field 
Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flow- 
ers, 
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis 270 
Was gathered — which cost Ceres all that 

pain 
To seek her through the world — nor that 

sweet grove 
Of Daphne, by Orontes and the inspired 
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise 
Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian isle, 



142 



PARADISE LOST 



Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham, 
Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan 

Jove, 
Hid Amalthea, and her florid son, 
Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's 
eye ; 279 

Nor, where Abassin kings their issue guard, 
Mount Amara (though this by some sup- 
posed 
True Paradise) under the Ethiop line 
By Nilus' head, enclosed with shining rock, 
A whole day's journey high, but wide re- 
mote 
From this Assyrian garden, where the 

Fiend 
Saw undelighted all delight, all kind 
Of living creatures, new to sight and 

strange. 
Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall, 
God-like erect, with native honour clad 
In naked majesty, seemed lords of all, 290 
And worthy seemed; for in their looks di- 
vine 
The image of their glorious Maker shon, 
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and 

pure — 
Severe, but in true filial freedom placed, 
Whence true authority in men: though both 
Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed; 
For contemplation he and valour formed, 
For softness she and sweet attractive grace ; 
He for God only, she for God in him. 
His fair large front and eye sublime de- 
clared 300 
Absolute rule; and Hyacinthin locks 
Round from his parted forelock manly hung 
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders 

broad : 
She, as a veil down to the slender waist, 
Her unadorned golden tresses wore 
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved 
As the vine curls her tendrils — which im- 
plied 
Subjection, but required with gentle sway, 
And by her yielded, by him best received 
Yielded, with coy submission, modest pride, 
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. 311 
Nor those mysterious parts were then con- 
cealed; 
Then was not guilty shame. Dishonest 

shame 
Of Nature's works, honour dishonourable, 
Sin-bred, how have ye troubled all mankind 
With shews instead, mere shews of seem- 
ing pure, 



And banished from man's life his happiest 

life, 
Simplicity and spotless innocence ! 
So passed they naked on, nor shunned the 

sight 3,9 

Of God or Angel; for they thought no 

So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest 

pair 
That ever since in love's imbraces met — 
Adam the goodliest man of men since born 
His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve. 
Under a tuft of shade that on a green 
Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain- 
side, 
They sat them down; and, after no more 

toil 
Of their sweet gardening labour than suf- 
ficed 
To recommend cool Zephyr, and make ease 
More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite 
More grateful, to their supper-fruits they 
fell- 33« 

Nectarine fruits, which the compliant 

boughs 
Yielded them, sidelong as they sat recline 
On the soft downy bank damasked with 

flowers. 
The savoury pulp they chew, and in the 

rind, 
Still as they thirsted, scoop the brimming 

stream ; 
Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles 
Wanted, nor youthful dalliance, as beseems 
Fair couple linked in happy nuptial league, 
Alone as they. About them frisking played 
All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of 
all chase 341 

In wood or wilderness, forest or den. 
Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw 
Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, 

pards, 
Gambolled before them; the unwieldy ele- 
phant, 
To make them mirth, used all his might, 

and wreathed 
His lithe proboscis; close the serpent sly, 
Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine 
His breaded train, and of his fatal guile 349 
Gave proof unheeded. Others on the grass 
Couched, and, now filled with pasture, gaz- 
ing sat, 
Or bed ward ruminating; for the sun, 
Declined, was hastening now with prone 
career 



BOOK FOURTH 



i43 



To the Ocean Isles, and in the ascending 

scale 
Of Heaven the stars that usher evening 

rose: 
When Satan, still in gaze as first he stood, 
Scarce thus at length failed speech recov- 
ered sad : — 
" O Hell ! what do mine eyes with grief 
behold ? 
Into our room of bliss thus high advanced 
Creatures of other mould — Earth - born 
perhaps, 360 

Not Spirits, yet to Heavenly Spirits bright 
Little inferior — whom my thoughts pur- 
sue 
With wonder, and could love; so lively 

shines 
In them divine resemblance, and such grace 
The hand that formed them on their shape 

hath poured. 
Ah ! gentle pair, ye little think how nigh 
Your change approaches, when all these 

delights 
Will vanish, and deliver ye to woe — 
More *-oe, the more your taste is now of 

Happy, but for so happy ill secured 370 

Long to continue, and this high seat, your 

Heaven, 
111 fenced for Heaven to keep out such a 

foe 
As now is entered; yet no purposed foe 
To you, whom I could pity thus forlorn, 
Though I unpitied. League with you I 

seek, 
And mutual amity, so strait, so close, 
That I with you must dwell, or you with 

me, 
Henceforth. My dwelling, haply, may not 

please, 
Like this fair Paradise, your sense; yet 

such 379 

Accept your Maker's work; he gave it me, 
Which I as freely give. Hell shall unfold, 
To entertain you two, her widest gates, 
And send forth all her kings; there will be 

room, 
Not like these narrow limits, to receive 
Your numerous offspring; if no better place, 
Thank him who puts me, loath, to this re- 
venge 
On you, who wrong me not, for him who 

wronged. 
And, should I at your harmless innocence 
Melt, as I do, yet public reason just — 389 



Honour and empire with revenge enlarged 
By conquering this new World — compels 

me now 
To do what else, though damned, I should 

abhor." 
So spake the Fiend, and with necessity, 
The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish 

deeds. 
Then from his lofty stand on that high 

tree 
Down he alights among the sportful herd 
Of those four-footed kinds, himself now 

one, 
Now other, as their shape served best his 

end 
Nearer to view his prey, and, unespied, 
To mark what of their state he more might 

learn 400 

By word or action marked. About them 

round 
A lion now he stalks with fiery glare; 
Then as a tiger, who by chance hath spied 
In some pourlieu two gentle fawns at play, 
Straight crouches close; then rising, changes 

oft 
His couchant watch, as one who chose his 

ground, 
Whence rushing he might surest seize them 

both 
Griped in each paw: when Adam, first of 

men, 
To first of women, Eve, thus moving speech, 
Turned him all ear to hear new utterance 

flow: — 410 

" Sole partner and sole part of all these 

j°y s > 

Dearer thyself than all, needs must the 

Power 
That made us, and for us this ample World, 
Be infinitely good, and of his good 
As liberal and free as infinite ; 
That raised us from the dust, and placed 

us here 
In all this happiness, who at this hand 
Have nothing merited, nor can perform 
Aught whereof he hath need; he who re- 
quires 
From us no other service than to keep 420 
This one, this easy charge — of all the trees 
In Paradise that bear delicious fruit 
So various, not to taste that only Tree 
Of Knowledge, planted by the Tree of 

Life; 
So near grows Death to Life, whate'er 
Death is — 



144 



PARADISE LOST 



Some dreadful thing no doubt; for well 

thou know'st 
God hath pronounced it Death to taste that 

Tree: 
The only sign of our obedience left 
Among so many signs of power and rule 
Conferred upon us, and dominion given 430 
Over all other creatures that possess 
Earth, Air, and Sea. Then let us not think 

hard 
One easy prohibition, who enjoy 
Free leave so large to all things else, and 

choice 
Unlimited of manifold delights; 
But let us ever praise him, and extol 
His bounty, following our delightful task, 
To prune these growing plants, and tend 

these flowers; 
Which, were it toilsome, yet with thee were 

sweet." 
To whom thus Eve replied: — "O thou 

for whom 440 

And from whom I was formed flesh of thy 

flesh, 
And without whom am to no end, my guide 
And head ! what thou hast said is just and 

right. 
For we to him, indeed, all praises owe, 
And daily thanks — I chiefly, who enjoy 
So far the happier lot, enjoying thee 
Pre-eminent by so much odds, while thou 
Like consort to thyself canst nowhere find. 
That day I oft remember, when from 

sleep 
I first awaked, and found myself reposed, 
Under a shade, on flowers, much wonder- 
ing where 451 
And what I was, whence thither brought, 

and how. 
Not distant far from thence a murmuring 

sound 
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread 
Into a liquid plain; then stood unmoved, 
Pure as the expanse of Heaven. I thither 

went 
With unexperienced thought, and laid me 

down 
On the green bank, to look into the clear 
Smooth lake, that to me seemed another 

sky. 
As I bent down to look, just opposite 460 
A Shape within the watery gleam appeared, 
Bending to look on me. I started back, 
It started back; but pleased I soon re- 
turned, 



Pleased it returned as soon with answering 

looks 
Of sympathy and love. There I had fixed 
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain 

desire, 
Had not a voice thus warned me : ' What 

thou seest, 
What there thou seest, fair creature, is 

thyself; 
With thee it came and goes: but follow 

me, 
And I will bring thee where no shadow 

stays 470 

Thy coming, and thy soft imbraces — he 
Whose image thou art; him thou shalt en- 
joy 
Inseparably thine; to him shalt bear 
Multitudes like thyself, and thence be 

called 
Mother of human race.' What could I do, 
But follow straight, invisibly thus led ? 
Till I espied thee, fair, indeed, and tall, 
Under a platan; yet methought less fair, 
Less winning soft, less amiably mild, 
Than that smooth watery image. Back I 

turned ; 480 

Thou, following, cried'st aloud, ' Return, 

fair Eve; 
Whom fliest thou ? Whom thou fliest, of 

him thou art, 
His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I 

lent 
Out of my side to thee, nearest my heart, 
Substantial life, to have thee by my side 
Henceforth an individual solace dear: 
Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim 
My other half.' With that thy gentle hand 
Seized mine : I yielded, and from that time 

see 
How beauty is excelled by manly grace 490 
And wisdom, which alone is truly fair." 
So spake our general mother, and, with 

eyes 
Of conjugal attraction unreproved, 
And meek surrender, half-imbracing leaned 
On our first father; half her swelling breast 
Naked met his, under the flowing gold 
Of her loose tresses hid. He, in delight 
Both of her beauty and submissive charms, 
Smiled with superior love, as Jupiter 
On Juno smiles when he impregns the 

clouds 500 

That shed May flowers, and pressed her 

matron lip 
With kisses pure. Aside the Devil turned 



BOOK FOURTH 



i45 



For envy; yet with jealous leer malign 
Eyed them askance, and to himself thus 
plained : — 
" Sight hateful, sight tormenting ! Thus 
these two, 
Imparadised in one another's arms, 
The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill 
Of bliss on bliss; while I to Hell am 

thrust, 
Where neither joy nor love, but fierce de- 
sire, 509 
Among our other torments not the least, 
Still unfulfilled, with pain of longing pines ! 
Yet let me not forget what I have gained 
From their own mouths. All is not theirs, 

it seems; 
One fatal tree there stands, of Knowledge 

called, 
Forbidden them to taste. Knowledge for- 
bidden ? 
Suspicious, reasonless ! Why should their 

Lord 
Envy them that ? Can it be sin to know ? 
Can it be death ? And do they only stand 
By ignorance ? Is that their happy state, 
The proof of their obedience and their 
faith ? 520 

O fair foundation laid whereon to build 
Their ruin ! Hence I will excite their 

minds 
With more desire to know, and to reject 
Envious commands, invented with design 
To keep them low, whom knowledge might 

exalt 
Equal with gods. Aspiring to be such, 
They taste and die: what likelier can en- 
sue ? 
But first with narrow search I must walk 

round 
This garden, and no corner leave unspied; 
A chance but chance may lead where I may 
meet 530 

Some wandering Spirit of Heaven, by foun- 
tain-side, 
Or in thick shade retired, from him to draw 
What further would be learned. Live 

while ye may, 
Yet happy pair; enjoy, till I return, 
Short pleasures; for long woes are to suc- 
ceed ! " 
So saying, his proud step he scornful 
turned, 
But with sly circumspection, and began 
Through wood, through waste, o'er hill, 
o'er dale, his roam. 



Meanwhile in utmost longitude, where 

Heaven 
With Earth and Ocean meets, the setting 

Sun 54 o 

Slowly descended, and with right aspect' 
Against the eastern gate of Paradise 
Levelled his evening rays. It was a rock 
Of alablaster, piled up to the clouds, 
Conspicuous far, winding with one ascent 
Accessible from Earth, one entrance high; 
The rest was craggy cliff, that overhung 
Still as it rose, impossible to climb. 
Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat, 
Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting 

night; 550 

About him exercised heroic games 
The unarmed youth of Heaven; but nigh 

at hand 
Celestial armoury, shields, helms, and 

spears, 
Hung high, with diamond flaming and with 

gold. 
Thither came Uriel, gliding through the 

even 
On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star 
In autumn thwarts the night, when vapours 

fired 
Impress the air, and shews the mariner 
From what point of his compass to beware 
Impetuous winds. He thus began in 

haste : — 560 

" Gabriel, to thee thy course by lot hath 

given 
Charge and strict watch that to this happy 

place 
No evil thing approach or enter in. 
This day at highth of noon came to my 

sphere 
A Spirit, zealous, as he seemed, to know 
More of the Almighty's works, and chiefly 

Man, 
God's latest image. I described his way 
Bent all on speed, and marked his aerie 

gait, 
But in the mount that lies from Eden north, 
Where he first lighted, soon discerned his 

looks 570 

Alien from Heaven, with passions foul ob- 
scured. 
Mine eye pursued him still, but under 

shade 
Lost sight of him. One of the banished 

crew, 
I fear, hath ventured from the Deep, to 

raise 



146 



PARADISE LOST 



New troubles; him thy care must be to 
find." 
To whom the winged Warrior thus re- 
turned: — 

" Uriel, no wonder if thy perfet sight, 

Amid the Sun's bright circle where thou 
sitt'st, 

See far and wide. In at this gate none 
pass 

The vigilance here placed, but such as 
come 580 

Well known from Heaven; and since me- 
ridian hour 

No creature thence. If Spirit of other 
sort, 

So minded, have o'erleaped these earthy 
bounds 

On purpose, hard thou know'st it to ex- 
clude 

Spiritual substance with corporeal bar. 

But, if within the circuit of these walks, 

In whatsoever shape, he lurk of whom 

Thou tell'st, by morrow dawning I shall 
know." 
So promised he; and Uriel to his charge 

Returned on that bright beam, whose point 
now raised 590 

Bore him slope downward to the Sun, now 
fallen 

Beneath the Azores; whether the Prime 
Orb, 

Incredible how swift, had thither rowled 

Diurnal, or this less volubil Earth, 

By shorter flight to the east, had left him 
there 

Arraying with reflected purple and gold 

The clouds that on his western throne at- 

.---- tend. 
Now came still Evening on, and Twi- 
light gray 



\ 



Had in her sober livery all things clad: 



I 

Silence accompanied ; for beast and bird, i 

They to their grassy couch, these to their 
nests 601 

Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightin- 
gale. 

She all night long her amorous descant 
sung: 

Silence was pleased. Now glowed the fir- 
mament 

With living Saphirs; Hesperus, that led 

The starry host, rode brightest, till the 
Moon, 

Rising in clouded majesty, at length 



Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless 

light, 
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw; 
When Adam thus to Eve: — "Fair con- 
sort, the hour 610 
Of night, and all things now retired to 

rest, 
Mind us of like repose; since God hath set 
Labour and rest, as day and night, to men 
Successive, and the timely dew of sleep, 
Now falling with soft slumberous weight, 

inclines 
Our eye-lids. Other creatures all day long 
Rove idle, unimployed, and less need rest; 
Man hath his daily work of body or mind 
Appointed, which declares his dignity, 
And the regard of Heaven on all his ways; 
While other animals unactive range, 621 
And of their doings God takes no account. 
To-morrow, ere fresh morning streak the 

east 
With first approach of light, we must be 

risen, 
And at our pleasant labour, to reform 
Yon flowery arbours, yonder alleys green, 
Our walk at noon, with branches over- 
grown, 
That mock our scant manuring, and re- 
quire 
More hands than ours to lop their wanton 

growth. 
Those blossoms also, and those dropping 

gums, 630 

That lie bestrown, unsightly and unsmooth, 
Ask riddance, if we mean to tread with 

ease. 
Meanwhile, as Nature wills, Night bids us 

rest." 
To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty 

adorned : — 
' ' My author and disposer, what thou 

bidd'st 
Unargued I obey. So God ordains: 
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no 

more 
Is woman's happiest knowledge, and her 

praise. 
With thee conversing, I forget all time, 
All seasons, and their change; all please 

alike. 640 

Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising 

sweet, 
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the 

Sun, 






I^aaM -*^* 



BOOK FOURTH 



i47 



When first on this delightful land he 

spreads 
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and 

flower, 
Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertil 

Earth 
After soft showers; and sweet the coming- 

on 
Of grateful Evening mild; then silent 

Night, 
With this her solemn bird, and this fair 

Moon, 
And these the gems of Heaven, her starry- 
train : 
But neither breath of Morn, when she as- 
cends 650 
With charm of earliest birds; nor rising 

Sun 
On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, 

flower, 
Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after 

showers ; 
Nor grateful Evening mild; nor silent 

Night, 
With this her solemn bird; nor walk by 

moon, 
Or glittering star-light, without thee is 

sweet. 
But wherefore all night long shine these ? 

for whom 
This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut 

all eyes ? " 
To whom our general ancestor replied: — 
" Daughter of God and Man, accomplished 

Eve, 660 

Those have their course to finish round the 

Earth 
By morrow evening, and from land to land 
In order, though to nations yet unborn, 
Ministering light prepared, they set and 

rise; 
Lest total Darkness should by night regain 
Her old possession, and extinguish life 
In nature and all things; which these soft 

fires 
Not only enlighten, but with kindly heat 
Of various influence foment and warm, 669 
Temper or nourish, or in part shed down 
Their stellar virtue on all kinds that grow 
On Earth, made hereby apter to receive 
Perfection from the Sun's more potent ray. 
These, then, though unbeheld in deep of 

night, 
Shine not in vain.l Nor think, though men 

were none,| 



That Heaven would want spectators, God 

want praise— — ^ 
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the 

Earth 
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we 

sleep : 
All these with ceaseless praise his works 

behold 
Both day and night. How often, from the 
steep 680 

Of echoing hill or thicket, have we heard 
Celestial voices to the midnight air, 
Sole, or responsive each to other's note, 
Singing their great Creator ! Oft in bands 
While they keep watch, or nightly round- 
ing walk, 
With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds 
In full harmonic number joined, their songs 
Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to 
Heaven." 
Thus talking, hand in hand alone they 
passed 689 

On to their blissful bower. It was a place 
Chosen by the sovran Planter, when he 

framed 
All things to Man's delightful use. The 

roof 
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade, 
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew 
Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either side 
Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub, 
Fenced up the verdant wall; each beaute- 
ous flower, 
Iris all hues, roses, and gessamin, 
Reared high their flourished heads be- 
tween, and wrought 
Mosaic ; under foot the violet, 70c 

Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay 
Broidered the ground, more coloured than 

with stone 
Of costliest emblem. Other creature here, 
Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter 

none; 
Such was their awe of Man. In shadier 

bower 
More sacred and sequestered, though but 

feigned, 
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph 
Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close re- 
cess, 
With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling 

hearbs, 
Espoused Eve decked first her nuptial 
bed, 710 

And heavenly choirs the hymenaean sung, 



V 



148 



PARADISE LOST 



What day the genial Angel to our Sire 
Brought her, in naked beauty more adorned, 
More lovely, than Pandora, whom the gods 
Endowed with all their gifts ; and, O ! too 

like 
In sad event, when, to the unwiser son 
Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she en- 
snared 
Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged 
On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire. 
Thus at their shady lodge arrived, both 

stood, 720 

Both turned, and under open sky adored 
The God that made both Sky, Air, Earth, 

and Heaven, 
Which they beheld, the Moon's resplendent 

globe, 
And starry Pole: — " Thou also madest the 

Night, 
Maker Omnipotent; and thou the Day, 
Which we, in our appointed work imployed, 
Have finished, happy in our mutual help 
And mutual love, the crown of all our bliss 
Ordained by thee ; and this delicious place, 
For us too large, where thy abundance 

wants 730 

Partakers, and uncropt falls to the ground. 
But thou hast promised from us two a race 
To fill the Earth, who shall with us extol 
Thy goodness infinite, both when we wake, 
And when we seek, as now, thy gift of 

sleep." 
This said unanimous, and other rites 
Observing none, but adoration pure, 
Which God likes best, into their inmost 

bower 
Handed they went ; and, eased the putting- 

off 
These troublesome disguises which we 

wear, 740 

Straight side by side were laid; nor turned, 

I ween, 
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the 

rites 
Mysterious of connubial love refused: 
Whatever hypocrites austerely talk 
Of purity, and place, and innocence, 
Defaming as impure what God declares 
Pure, and commands to some, leaves free 

to all. 
Our Maker bids increase ; who bids abstain 
But our destroyer, foe to God and Man ? 
Hail, wedded Love, mysterious law, true 

source 750 

Of human offspring, sole propriety 



In Paradise of all things common else ! 
By thee adulterous lust was driven from 

men 
Among the bestial herds to raunge; by 

thee, 
Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure, 
Relations dear, and all the charities 
Of father, son, and brother, first were 

known. 
Far be it that I should write thee sin or 

blame, 
Or think thee unbefitting holiest place, 
Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets, 760 
W T hose bed is undefiled and chaste pro- 
nounced, 
Present, or past, as saints and patriarchs 

used. 
Here Love his golden shafts imploys, here 

lights 
His constant lamp, and waves his purple 

wings, 
Reigns here and revels; not in the bought 

smile 
Of harlots — loveless, joyless, unindeared, 
Casual fruition; nor in court amours, 
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight 

bal, 
Or serenate, which the starved lover sings 
To his proud fair, best quitted with dis- 
dain. 770 
These, lulled by nightingales, imbracing 

slept, 
And on their naked limbs the flowery roof 
Showered roses, which the morn repaired. 

Sleep on, 
Blest pair ! and, O ! yet happiest, if ye seek 
No happier state, and know to know no 

more ! 
Now had Night measured with her 

shadowy cone 
Half-way up-hill this vast sublunar vault, 
And from their ivory port the Cherubim 
Forth issuing, at the accustomed hour, stood 

armed 
To their night-watches in warlike parade; 
When Gabriel to his next in power thus 

spake: — 781 

" Uzziel, half these draw off, and coast 

the south 
With strictest watch ; these other wheel the 

north: 
Our circuit meets full west." As flame 

they part, 
Half wheeling to the shield, half to the 

spear. 



BOOK FOURTH 



149 



From these, two strong and subtle Spirits 

he called 
That near him stood, and gave them thus 

in charge : — 
" Ithuriel and Zephon, with winged 

speed 
Search through this Garden; leave un- 

searched no nook; 
But chiefly where those two fair creatures 

lodge, 79° 

■Now laid perhaps asleep, secure of harm. 
This evening from the Sun's decline arrived 
Who tells of some infernal Spirit seen 
Hitherward bent (who could have 

thought ?), escaped 
The bars of Hell, on errand bad, no doubt: 
Such, where ye find, seize fast, and hither 

bring." 
So saying, on he led his radiant files, 
Dazzling the moon; these to the bower 

direct 
In search of whom they sought. Him there 

they found 
Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, 
Assaying by his devilish art to reach 801 
The organs of her fancy, and with them 

forge 
Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams; 
Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint 
The animal spirits, that from pure blood 

arise 
Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence 

raise, 
At least distempered, discontented thoughts, 
Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires, 
Blown up with high conceits ingendering 

pride. 
Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear 810 
Touched lightly; for no falsehood can en- 
dure 
Touch of celestial temper, but returns 
Of force to its own likeness. Up he starts, 
Discovered and surprised. As, when a 

spark 
Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid 
Fit for the tun, some magazin to store 
Against a rumoured war, the smutty grain, 
With sudden blaze diffused, inflames the 

air; 
So started up, in his own shape, the Fiend. 
Back stept those two fair Angels, half 

amazed 820 

So sudden to behold the griesly King; 
Yet thus, unmoved with fear, accost him 

soon: — 



" Which of those rebel Spirits adjudged 

to Hell 
Com'st thou, escaped thy prison ? and, 

transformed, 
Why satt'st thou like an enemy in wait, 
Here watching at the head of these that 

sleep ? " 
" Know ye not, then," said Satan, filled 

with scorn, 
" Know ye not me ? Ye knew me once no 

mate 
For you, there sitting where ye durst not 

soar ! 
Not to know me argues yourselves un- 
known, 830 
The lowest of your throng; or, if ye know, 
Why ask ye, and superfluous begin 
Your message, like to end as much in 

vain?" 
To whom thus Zephon, answering scorn 

with scorn : — 
" Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the 

same, 
Or undiminished brightness, to be known 
As when thou stood'st in Heaven upright 

and pure. 
That glory then, when thou no more wast 

good, 
Departed from thee; and thou resemblest 

now 
Thy sin and place of doom obscure and 

foul. 840 

But come; for thou, be sure, shalt give ac- 
count 
To him who sent us, whose charge is to keep 
This place inviolable, and these from harm." 
So spake the Cherub; and his grave re- 
buke, 
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace 
Invincible. Abashed the Devil stood, 
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw 
Virtue in her shape how lovely — saw, and 

pined 
His loss ; but chiefly to find here observed 
His lustre visibly impaired; yet seemed 
Undaunted. " If I must contend," said 
he, 851 

" Best with the best — the sender, not the 

sent; 
Or all at once: more glory will be won, 
Or less be lost." " Thy fear," said Zephon 

bold, 
" Will save us trial what the least can do 
Single against thee wicked, and thence 
weak." 



*5° 



PARADISE LOST 



The Fiend replied not, overcome with 
rage; 
But, like a proud steed reined, went haughty 

on, 
Chaumping his iron curb. To strive or 

% 

He held it vain; awe from above had 
quelled 860 

His heart, not else dismayed. Now drew 
they nigh 

The western point, where those half -round- 
ing guards 

Just met, and, closing, stood in squadron 
joined, 

Awaiting next command. To whom their 
chief, 

Gabriel, from the front thus called aloud : — 
" O friends, I hear the tread of nimble 
feet 

Hasting this way, and now by glimpse dis- 
cern 

Ithuriel and Zephon through the shade ; 

And with them comes a third, of regal port, 

But faded splendour wan, who by his gait 

And fierce demeanour seems the Prince of 
Hell— 871 

Not likely to part hence without contest'. 

Stand firm, for in his look defiance lours." 
He scarce had ended, when those two ap- 
proached, 

And brief related whom they brought, 
where found, 

How busied, in what form and posture 
couched. 

To whom, with stern regard, thus Gabriel 
spake : — 

" Why hast thou, Satan, broke the bounds 
prescribed 

To thy trangressions, and disturbed the 
charge 879 

Of others, who approve not to transgress 

By thy example, but have power and right 

To question thy bold entrance on this place ; 

Imployed, it seems, to violate sleep, and 
those 

Whose dwelling God hath planted here in 
bliss ? " 
To whom thus Satan, with contemptuous 
brow : — 

" Gabriel, thou hadst in Heaven the esteem 
of wise; 

And such I held thee; but this question 
asked 

Puts me in doubt. Lives there who loves 
his pain ? 



Who would not, finding way, break loose 

from Hell, 
Though thither doomed ? Thou wouldst 

thyself, no doubt, 890 

And boldly venture to whatever place 
Farthest from pain, where thou mightst 

hope to change 
Torment with ease, and soonest recompense 
Dole with delight; which in this place I 

sought: 
To thee no reason, who know'st only good, 
But evil hast not tried. And wilt object 
His will who bound us ? Let him surer 

bar 
His iron gates, if he intends our stay 
In that dark durance. Thus much what 

was asked: 
The rest is true; they found me where 

they say; 900 

But that implies not violence or harm." 
Thus he in scorn. The warlike Angel 

moved, 
Disdainfully half smiling, thus replied: — 
" O loss of one in Heaven to judge of wise, 
Since Satan fell, whom folly overthrew, 
And now returns him from his prison 

scaped, 
Gravely in doubt whether to hold them 

wise 
Or not who ask what boldness brought him 

hither 
Unlicensed from his bounds in Hell pre- 
scribed ! 
So wise he judges it to fly from pain 910 
However, and to scape his punishment ! 
So judge thou still, presumptuous, till the 

wrauth, 
Which thou incurr'st by flying, meet thy 

flight 
Sevenfold, and scourge that wisdom back 

to Hell, 
Which taught thee yet no better that no 

pain 
Can equal anger infinite provoked. 
But wherefore thou alone ? Wherefore 

with thee 
Came not all Hell broke loose ? Is pain to 

them 
Less pain, less to be fled ? or thou than 

they 
Less hardy to endure ? Courageous chief, 
The first in flight from pain, hadst thou al- 
leged 921 
To thy deserted host this cause of flight, 
Thou surely hadst not come sole fugitive." 



BOOK FOURTH 



15 






To which the Fiend thus answered, frown- 
ing stern : — 
"Not that I less endure, or shrink from 

pain, 
Insulting Angel ! well thou know'st I stood 
Thy fiercest, when in battle to thy aid 
The blasting volleyed thunder made all 

speed 
And seconded thy else not dreaded spear. 
But still thy words at random, as before, 930 
Argue thy inexperience what behoves, 
From hard assays and ill successes past, 
A faithful leader — not to hazard all 
Through ways of danger by himself un- 
tried. 
I, therefore, I alone, first undertook 
To wing the desolate Abyss, and spy 
This new-created World, whereof in Hell 
Fame is not silent, here in hope to find 
Better abode, and my afflicted Powers 
To settle here on Earth, or in mid Air; 940 
Though for possession put to try once more 
What thou and thy gay legions dare against ; 
Whose easier business were to serve their 

Lord 
High up in Heaven, with songs to hymn his 

throne, 
And practised distances to cringe, not 
fight." 
To whom the Warrior-Angel soon re- 
plied : — 
" To say and straight unsay, pretending 

first 
Wise to fly pain, professing next the spy, 
Argues no leader, but a liar traced, 
Satan ; and couldst thou ' faithful ' add ? 
O name, 950 

O sacred name of faithfulness profaned ! 
Faithful to whom ? to thy rebellious crew ? 
Army of fiends, fit body to fit head ! 
Was this your discipline and faith ingaged, 
Your military obedience, to dissolve 
Allegiance to the acknowledged Power Su- 
preme ? 
And thou, sly hypocrite, who now wouldst 

seem 
Patron of liberty, who more than thou 
Once fawned, and cringed, and servilely 

adored 
Heaven's awful Monarch ? wherefore, but 
in hope 960 

To dispossess him, and thyself to reign ? 
But mark what I areed thee now: Avaunt ! 
Fly thither whence thou fledd'st. If from 
this hour 



Within these hallowed limits thou appear, 
Back to the Infernal Pit I drag thee 

chained, 
And seal thee so as henceforth not to scorn 
The facile gates of Hell too slightly barred." 
So threatened he ; but Satan to no threats 
Gave heed, but waxing more in rage, re- 
plied: — 
" Then, when I am thy captive, talk of 
chains, 970 

Proud limitary Cherub ! but ere then 
Far heavier load thyself expect to feel 
From my prevailing arm, though Heaven's 

King 
Ride on thy wings, and thou with thy Com- 
peers, 
Used to the yoke, draw'st his triumphant 

wheels 
In progress through the road of Heaven 
star-paved." 
While thus he spake, the angelic squad- 
ron bright 
Turned fiery red, sharpening in mooned 

horns 
Their phalanx, and began to hem him round 
With ported spears, as thick as when a 
field 980 

Of Ceres ripe for harvest waving bends 
Her bearded grove of ears which way the 

wind 
Sways them ; the careful ploughman doubt- 
ing stands 
Lest on the threshing-floor his hopeful 

sheaves 
Prove chaff. On the other side, Satan, 

alarmed, 
Collecting all his might, dilated stood, 
Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved: 
His stature reached the sky, and on his 

crest 
Sat Horror plumed; nor wanted in his 

grasp 
What seemed both spear and shield. Now 
dreadful deeds 990 

Might have ensued; nor only Paradise, 
In this commotion, but the starry cope 
Of Heaven perhaps, or all the Elements 
At least, had gone to wrack, disturbed and 

torn 
With violence of this conflict, had not soon 
The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray, 
Hung forth in Heaven his golden scales, 

yet seen 
Betwixt Astraea and the Scorpion sign, 
Wherein all things created first he weighed, 



152 



PARADISE LOST 



The pendulous round Earth with balanced 

air iooo 

In counterpoise, now ponders all events, 
Battles and realms. In these he put two 

weights, 
The sequel each of parting and of fight: 
The latter quick up flew, and kicked the 

beam; 
Which Gabriel spying thus bespake the 

Fiend: — 
"Satan, I know thy strength, and thou 

know'st mine, 
Neither our own, but given; what folly 

then 



To boast what arms can do ! since thine no 

more 
Than Heaven permits, nor mine, though 

doubled now 
To trample thee as mire. For proof look 

up, ioio 

And read thy lot in yon celestial sign, 
Where thou art weighed, and shown how 

light, how weak 
If thou resist." The Fiend looked up, and 

knew 
His mounted scale aloft: nor more; but fled 
Murmuring; and with him fled the shades 

of Night. 



BOOK V 

THE ARGUMENT 

Morning approached, Eve relates to Adam her trou- 
blesome dream ; he likes it not, yet comforts her : they 
come forth to their day labours : their morning hymn 
at the door of their bower. God, to render Man inex- 
cusable, sends Raphael to admonish him of his obedi- 
ence, of his free estate, of his enemy near at hand, who 
he is, and why his enemy, and whatever else may avail 
Adam to know. Raphael comes down to Paradise ; his 
appearance described ; his coming discerned by Adam 
afar off, sitting at the door of his bower ; he goes out 
to meet him, brings him to his lodge, entertains him 
with the choicest fruits of Paradise, got together by 
Eve ; their discourse at table. Raphael performs his 
message, minds Adam of his state and of his enemy ; 
relates, at Adam's request, who that enemy is, and how 
he came to be so, beginning from his first revolt in 
Heaven, and the occasion thereof ; how he drew his 
legions after him to the parts of the North, and there 
incited them to rebel with him, persuading all but only 
Abdiel, a seraph, who in argument dissuades and op- 
poses him, then forsakes him. 

Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern 

clime 
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient 

pearl. 
When Adam waked, so customed; for his 

sleep 
Was aerie light, from pure digestion bred, 
And temperate vapours bland, which the 

only sound 
Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan, 
Lightly dispersed, and the shrill matin song 
Of birds on every bough. So much the 

more 
His wonder was to find un wakened Eve, 
With tresses discomposed, and glowing 

cheek, 10 

As through unquiet rest. He, on his side 
Leaning half raised, with looks of cordial 

love 



Hung over her enamoured, and beheld 
Beauty which, whether waking or asleep, 
Shot forth peculiar gracesj; then, with 

voice 
Mild as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes, 
Her hand soft touching, whispered thus: — 

" Awake, 
My fairest, my espoused, my latest found, 
Heaven's last, best gift, my ever-new de- 
light ! 
Awake ! the morning shines, and the fresh 

field 20 

Calls us; we lose the prime to mark how 

spring 
Our tended plants, how blows the citron 

grove, 
What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy 

reed, 



How Nature paints her colours, «iow the bee 

Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.}' 

Such whispering waked her, but with 

startled eye 
On Adam; whom imbracing, thus she 

spake : — 
" O sole in whom my thoughts find all 

repose, 
My glory, my perfection ! glad I see 
Thy face, and morn returned; for I this 

night 30 

(Such night till this I never passed) have 

dreamed, 
If dreamed, not, as I oft am wont, of thee, 
Works of day past, or morrow's next de- 
sign; 
But of offence and trouble, which my mind 
Knew never till this irksome night. Me- 

thought 
Close at mine ear one called me forth to 

walk 



BOOK FIFTH 



i53 



With gentle voice; I thought it thine. It 
said, 

* Why sleep'st thou, Eve ? now is the plea- 
sant time, 

The cool, the silent, save where silence 
yields 

'To the night - warbling bird,? that now 
awake 40 

Tunes sweetest his love-laboured song; now 
reigns 

Full-orbed the moon, and, with more pleas- 
ing light, 

Shadowy sets off the face of things — in 
vain, 

If none regard. Heaven wakes with all his 
eyes; 

Whom to behold but thee, Nature's de- 
sire, 

In whose sight all things joy, with ravish- 
ment 

Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze ? ' 

I rose as at thy call, but found thee not: 

To find thee- 1 directed then my walk; 

And on, methought, alone I passed through 
ways 50 

That brought me on a sudden to the Tree 

Of interdicted Knowledge. Fair it seemed, 

Much fairer to my fancy than by day; 

And, as I wondering looked, beside it stood 

One shaped and winged like one of those 
from Heaven 

By us oft seen: his dewy locks distilled 

Ambrosia. On that Tree he also gazed ; 

And, ' O fair plant,' said he, ' with fruit 
surcharged, 

Deigns none to ease thy load, and taste thy 
sweet, 

Nor God nor Man ? Is knowledge so de- 
spised ? 60 

Or envy, or what reserve forbids to taste ? 

Forbid who will, none shall from me with- 
hold 

Longer thy offered good, why else set 
here ? ' 

This said, he paused not, but with ventrous 
arm 

He plucked, he tasted. Me damp horror 
chilled 

At such bold words vouched with a deed so 
bold; 

But he thus, overjoyed: ' O fruit divine, 

Sweet of thyself, but much more sweet thus 
cropt, 

Forbidden here, it seems, as only fit - 

For gods, yet able to make gods of men ! 70 



And why not gods of men, since good, the 

more 
Communicated, more abundant grows, 
The author not impaired, but honoured 

more ? 
Here, happy creature, fair angelic Eve ! 
Partake thou also: happy though thou a*rt, 
Happier thou may'st be, worthier canst not 

be. 
Taste this, and be henceforth among the 

gods 
Thyself a goddess; not to Earth confined, 
But sometimes in the Air, as we; sometimes 
Ascend to Heaven, by merit thine, and see 
What life the gods live there, and such live 

thou.' 81 

So saying, he drew nigh, and to me held, 
Even to my mouth of that same fruit held 

part 
Which he had plucked: the pleasant sa- 
voury smell 
So quickened appetite that I, methought, 
Could not but taste. Forthwith up to the 

clouds 
With him I flew, and underneath beheld 
The Earth outstretched immense, a pro- 
spect wide 
And various. Wondering at my flight and 

change 
To this high exaltation, suddenly 9° 

My guide was gone, and I, methought, sunk 

down, 
And fell asleep; but, O, how glad I waked 
To find this but a dream ! " Thus Eve her 

night 
Related, and thus Adam answered sad: — 
" Best image of myself, and dearer half, 
The trouble of thy thoughts this night in 

sleep 
Affects me equally; nor can I like 
This uncouth dream — of evil sprung, I 

fear; 
Yet evil whence? In thee can harbour 

none, 
Created pure. But know that in the soul 
Are many lesser faculties, that serve 10 1 
Reason as chief. Among these Fancy next 
Her office holds; of all external things, 
Which the five watchful senses represent, 
She forms imaginations, aerie shapes, 
Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames 
All what we affirm or what deny, and call 
Our knowledge or opinion; then retires 
Into her private cell when Nature rests. 
Oft, in her absence, mimic Fancy wakes T IO 



154 



PARADISE LOST 



To imitate her; but, mis joining shapes, 
Wild work produces oft, and most in 

dreams, 
111 matching words and deeds long past or 

late. 
Some such resemblances, methinks, I find 
Of our last evening's talk in this thy dream, 
But with addition strange. Yet be not 

sad: 
Evil into the mind of God or Man 
May come and go, so unapproved, and 

leave 
No spot or blame behind; which gives me 

hope 
That what in sleep thou didst abhor to 

dream 120 

Waking thou never wilt consent to do. 
Be not disheartened, then, nor cloud those 

looks, 
That wont to be more cheerful and serene 
Than when fair Morning first smiles on the 

world ; 
And let us to our fresh imployments rise 
Among the groves, the fountains, and the 

flowers, 
That open now their choicest bosomed 

smells, 
Reserved from night, and kept for thee in 

store." 
So cheered he his fair spouse; and she 

was cheered, 
But silently a gentle tear let fall 130 

From either eye, and wiped them with her 

hair: 
Two other precious drops that ready stood, 
Each in their crystal sluice, he, ere they 

fell, 
Kissed as the gracious signs of sweet re- 
morse 
And pious awe, that feared to have of- 
fended. 
So all was cleared, and to the field they 

haste. 
But first, from under shady arborous roof 
Soon as they forth were come to open sight 
Of day-spring, and the Sun — who, scarce 

uprisen, 
With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean- 
brim, 140 
Shot parallel to the Earth his dewy ray, 
Discovering in wide lantskip all the east 
Of Paradise and Eden's happy plains — 
Lowly they bowed, adoring, and began 
Their orisons, each morning duly paid 
In various style; for neither various style 



Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise 

Their Maker, in fit strains pronounced, or 
sung 

Unmeditated ; such prompt eloquence 

Flowed from their lips, in prose or numer- 
ous verse, 150 

More tuneable than needed lute or harp 

To add more sweetness. And they thus 
began : — 
" These are thy glorious works, Parent 
of good, 

Almighty ! thine this universal frame, 

Thus wondrous fair: Thyself how wondrous 
then ! 

Unspeakable ! who sitt'st above these hea- 
vens 

To us invisible, or dimly seen 

In these thy lowest works; yet these de- 
clare 

Thy goodness beyond thought, and power 
divine. 

Speak, ye who best can tell, ye Sons of 
Light, 160 

Angels — for ye behold him, and with 
songs 

And choral symphonies, day without night, 

Circle his throne rejoicing — ye in Heaven; 

On Earth join, all ye creatures, to extol 

Him first, him last, him midst, and without 
end. 

Fairest of Stars, last in the train of Night, 

If better thou belong not to the Dawn, 

Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smil- 
ing morn 

With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy 
sphere 

While day arises, that sweet hour of prime. 

Thou Sun, of this great World both eye 
and soul, 171 

Acknowledge him thy Greater; sound his 
praise 

In thy eternal course, both when thou 
climb'st, 

And when high noon hast gained, and when 
thou fall'st. 

Moon, that now meet'st the orient Sun, now 
fliest, 

With the fixed Stars, fixed in their orb that 
flies; 

And ye five other wandering Fires, that 
move 

In mystic dance, not without song, resound 

His praise who out of Darkness called up 
Light. 

Air, and ye Elements, the eldest birth 180 



BOOK FIFTH 



55 



Of Nature's womb, that in quaternion run 
Perpetual circle, multiform, and mix 
And nourish all things, let your ceaseless 

change 
Vary to our great Maker still new praise. 
Ye Mists and Exhalations, that now rise 
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray, 
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with 

gold, 
In honour to the World's great Author 

rise; 
Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured 

sky, 
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling 

showers, 190 

Rising or falling, still advance his praise. 
His praise, ye Winds, that from four quar- 
ters blow, 
Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, 

ye Pines, 
With every Plant, in sign of worship wave. 
Fountains, and ye, that warble, as ye flow, 
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his 

praise. 
Join voices, all ye living Souls. Ye Birds, 
That, singing, up to Heaven-gate ascend, 
Bear on your wings and in your notes his 

praise. 
Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk 
The earth, and stately tread, or lowly 

creep, 201 

Witness if / be silent, morn or even, 
To hill or valley, fountain, or fresh shade, 
Made vocal by my song, and taught his 

praise. 
Hail, universal Lord ! Be bounteous still 
To give us only good; and, if the night 
Have gathered aught of evil, or concealed, 
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark." 
So prayed they innocent, and to their 

thoughts 
Firm peace recovered soon, and wonted 

calm. 210 

On to their morning's rural work they 

haste, 
Among sweet dews and flowers, where any 

row 
Of fruit-trees, over-woody, reached too far 
Their pampered boughs, and needed hands 

to check 
Fruitless unbraces: or they led the vine 
To wed her elm; she, spoused, about him 

twines 
Her marriageable arms, and with her 

brings 



Her dower, the adopted clusters, to adorn 
His barren leaves. Them thus imployed 

beheld 
With pity Heaven's high King, and to him 
called 220 

Raphael, the sociable Spirit, that deigned 
To travel with Tobias, and secured 
His marriage with the seven-times-wedded 
maid. 
" Raphael," said he, " thou hear'st what 
stir on Earth 
Satan, from Hell scaped through the dark- 
some Gulf, 
Hath raised in Paradise, and how disturbed 
This night the human pair; how he designs 
In them at once to ruin all mankind. 
Go, therefore ; half this day, as friend with 

friend, 
Converse with Adam, in what bower or 
shade 230 

Thou find'st him from the heat of noon re- 
tired 
To respite his day-labour with repast 
Or with repose ; and such discourse bring on 
As may advise him of his happy state — 
Happiness in his power left free to will, 
Left to his own free will, his will though 

free 
Yet mutable. Whence warn him to be- 
ware 
He swerve not, too secure: tell him withal 
His danger, and from whom; what enemy, 
Late fallen himself from Heaven, is plot- 
ting now 240 
The fall of others from like state of bliss. 
By violence? no, for that shall be with- 
stood ; 
But by deceit and lies. This let him know, 
Lest, wilfully transgressing, he pretend 
Surprisal, unadmonished, unforewarned." 
So spake the Eternal Father, and ful- 
filled 
All justice. Nor delayed the winged Saint 
After his charge received ; but from among 
Thousand celestial Ardours, where he stood 
Veiled with his gorgeous wings, upspring- 
ing light, 250 
Flew through the midst of Heaven. The 

angelic quires, 
On each hand parting, to his speed gave 

way 
Through all the empyreal road, till, at the 

gate 
Of Heaven arrived, the gate self-opened 
wide, 



i56 



PARADISE LOST 



On golden hinges turning, as by work 
Divine the sovran Architect had framed. 
From hence — no cloud or, to obstruct his 

sight, 
Star interposed, however small — he sees, 
Not unconform to other shining globes, 
Earth, and the Garden of God, with cedars 

crowned 260 

Above all hills; as when by night the glass 
Of Galileo, less assured, observes 
Imagined lands and regions in the Moon; 
Or pilot from amidst the Cyclades 
Delos or Samos first appearing kens, 
A cloudy spot. Down thither prone in 

flight 
He speeds, and through the vast ethereal 

sky 
Sails between worlds and worlds, with 

steady wing 
Now on the polar winds ; then with quick fan 
Winnows the buxom air, till, within soar 
Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he 

seems 271 

A phoenix, gazed by all, as that sole bird, 
When, to enshrine his relics in the Sun's 
Bright temple, to ^Egyptian Thebs he flies. 
At once on the eastern cliff of Paradise 
He lights, and to his proper shape returns, 
A Seraph winged. Six wings he wore, to 

shade 
His lineaments divine : the pair that clad 
Each shoulder broad came mantling o'er 

his breast 
With regal ornament; the middle pair 280 
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round 
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy 

gold 
And colours dipt in heaven; the third his 

feet 
Shadowed from either heel with feathered 

mail, 
Sky-tinctured grain. Like Maia's son he 

stood, 
And shook his plumes, that heavenly fra- 
grance filled 
The circuit wide. Straight knew him all 

the bands 
Of Angels under watch, and to his state 
And to his message high in honour rise ; 
For on some message high they guessed 

him bound. 290 

Their glittering tents he passed, and now 

is come 
Into the blissful field, through groves of 

myrrh, 



And flowering odours, cassia, nard, and 

balm, 
A wilderness of sweets; for Nature here 
Wantoned as in her prime, and played at 

will 
Her virgin fancies, pouring forth more 

sweet, 
Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss. 
Him, through the spicy forest onward come, 
Adam discerned, as in the door he sat 
Of his cool bower, while now the mounted 

Sun 300 

Shot down direct his fervid rays, to warm 
Earth's inmost womb, more warmth than 

Adam needs; 
And Eve, within, due at her hour, prepared 
For dinner savoury fruits, of taste to please 
True appetite, and not disrelish thirst 
Of nectarous draughts between, from 

milky stream, 
Berry or grape: to whom thus Adam 

called : — 
" Haste hither, Eve, and, worth thy sight, 

behold 
Eastward among those trees what glorious 

Shape 
Comes this way moving; seems another 

morn 310 

Risen on mid-noon. Some great behest 

from Heaven 
To us perhaps he brings, and will voutsafe 
This day to be our guest. But go with 

speed, 
And what thy stores contain bring forth, 

and pour 
Abundance fit to honour and receive 
Our heavenly stranger; well we may afford 
Our givers their own gifts, and large be- 
stow 
From large bestowed, where Nature multi- 
plies 
Her fertile growth, and by disburdening 

grows 
More fruitful; which instructs us not to 

spare." 320 

To whom thus Eve: — " Adam, Earth's 

hallowed mould, 
Of God inspired, small store will serve 

where store, 
All seasons, ripe for use hangs on the 

stalk; 
Save what, by frugal storing, firmness gains 
To nourish, and superfluous moist consumes. 
But I will haste, and from each bough and 

brake, 



BOOK FIFTH 



■57 



Each plant and juiciest gourd, will pluck 

such choice 
To entertain our Angel-guest as he, 
Beholding, shall confess that here on Earth 
God hath dispensed his bounties as in 

Heaven. 330 

So saying, with dispatchf ul looks in haste 
She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent 
What choice to choose for delicacy best, 
What order so contrived as not to mix 
Tastes, not well joined, inelegant, but bring 
Taste after taste upheld with kindliest 

change : 
Bestirs her then, and from each tender 

stalk 
Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields 
In India East or West, or middle shore 
In Pontus or the Punic coast, or where 340 
Alcinous reigned, fruit of all kinds, in 

coat 
Rough or smooth rined, or bearded husk, 

or shell, 
She gathers, tribute large, and on the board 
Heaps with unsparing hand. For drink 

the grape 
She crushes, inoffensive must, and meaths 
From many a berry, and from sweet ker- 
nels pressed 
She tempers dulcet creams — nor these to 

hold 
Wants her fit vessels pure ; then strews 

the ground 
With rose and odours from the shrub un- 

fumed. 
Meanwhile our primitive great Sire, to 

meet 350 

His godlike guest, walks forth, without 

more train 
Accompanied than with his own complete 
Perfections ; in himself was all his state, 
More solemn than the tedious pomp that 

waits 
On princes, when their rich retin'ue long 
Of horses led and grooms besmeared with 

gold 
Dazzles the crowd and sets them all agape. 
Nearer his presence, Adam, though not 

awed, 
Yet with submiss approach and reverence 

meek, 
As to a superior nature, bowing low, 360 
Thus said: — "Native of Heaven (for 

other place 
None can than Heaven such glorious Shape 

contain), 



Since, by descending from the Thrones 

above, 
Those happy places thou hast deigned a 

while 
To want, and honour these, voutsafe with 

us, 
Two only, who yet by sovran gift possess 
This spacious ground, in yonder shady 

bower 
To rest, and what the Garden choicest bears 
To sit and taste, till this meridian heat 
Be over, and the sun more cool decline." 370 
Whom thus the angelic Virtue answered 

mild : — 
"Adam, I therefore came; nor art thou 

such 
Created, or such place hast here to dwell, 
As may not oft invite, though Spirits of 

Heaven, 
To visit thee. Lead on, then, where thy 

bower 
O'ershades; for these mid-hours, till even- 
ing rise, 
I have at will." So to the sylvan lodge 
They came, that like Pomona's arbour 

smiled, 
With flowerets decked and fragrant smells. 

But Eve, 
Undecked, save with herself, more lovely 

fair 380 

Than wood-nymph, or the fairest goddess 

feigned 
Of three that in Mount Ida naked strove, 
Stood to entertain her guest from Heaven; 

no veil 
She needed, virtue-proof ; no thought infirm 
Altered her cheek. On whom the Angel 

"Hail!" 
Bestowed — the holy salutation used 
Long after to blest Mary, second Eve : — 
" Hail ! Mother of mankind, whose fruit- 
ful womb 
Shall fill the world more numerous with 

thy sons 
Than with these various fruits the trees of 

God 390 

Have heaped this table ! " Raised of grassv 

turf 
Their table was, and mossy seats had round, 
And on her ample square, from side to side, 
All Autumn piled, though Spring and Au- 
tumn here 
Danced hand-in-hand. A while discourse 

they hold — 
No fear lest dinner cool — when thus began 



158 



PARADISE LOST 



Our Author: — " Heavenly Stranger, please 

to taste 
These bounties, which our Nourisher, from 

whom 
All perfet good, unmeasured-out, descends, 
To us for food and for delight hath caused 
The Earth to yield: unsavoury food, per- 
haps, 401 
To Spiritual Natures; only this I know, 
That one Celestial Father gives to all." 
To whom the Angel: — " Therefore, what 

he gives 
(Whose praise be ever sung) to Man, in 

part 
Spiritual, may of purest Spirits be found 
No ingrateful food: and food alike those 

pure 
Intelligential substances require 
As doth your Rational; and both contain 
Within them every lower faculty 410 

Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, 

touch, taste, 
Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate, 
And corporeal to incorporeal turn. 
For know, whatever was created needs 
To be sustained and fed. Of Elements 
The grosser feeds the purer: Earth the 

Sea; 
Earth and the Sea feed Air; the Air those 

Fires 
Ethereal, and, as lowest, first the Moon; 
Whence in her visage round those spots, 

unpurged, 419 

Vapours not yet into her substance turned. 
Nor doth the Moon no nourishment exhale 
From her moist continent to higher Orbs. 
The Sun, that light imparts to all, receives 
From all his alimental recompense 
In humid exhalations, and at even 
Sups with the Ocean. Though in Heaven 

the trees 
Of life ambrosial fruitage bear, and vines 
Yield nectar — though from off the boughs 

each morn 
We brush mellifluous dews and find the 

ground 
Covered with pearly grain — yet God hath 

here 430 

Varied his bounty so with new delights 
As may compare with Heaven ; and to taste 
Think not I shall be nice." So down they 

sat, 
And to their viands fell; nor seemingly 
The Angel, nor in mist — the common gloss 
Of theologians — but with keen dispatch 



Of real hunger, and concoctive heat 
To transubstantiate: what redounds trans- 
pires 
Through Spirits with ease; nor wonder, if 

by fire 
Of sooty coal the Empiric Alchimist 440 
Can turn, or holds it possible to turn, 
Metals of drossiest ore to perfet gold, 
As from the mine. Meanwhile at table 

Eve 
Ministered naked, and their flowing cups 
With pleasant liquors crowned. O inno- 
cence 
Deserving Paradise ! If ever, then, 
Then had the Sons of God excuse to have 

been 
Enamoured at that sight. But in those 

hearts 
Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy 
Was understood, the injured lover's hell. 450 
Thus when with meats and drinks they 
had sufficed, 
Not burdened nature, sudden mind arose 
In Adam not to let the occasion pass, 
Given him by this great conference, to know 
Of things above his world, and of their be- 
ing 
Who dwell in Heaven, whose excellence he 

saw 
Transcend his own so far, whose radiant 

forms, 
Divine effulgence, whose high power so 

far 
Exceeded human; and his wary speech 459 
Thus to the empyreal minister he framed : — 
" Inhabitant with God, now know I well 
Thy favour, in this honour done to Man; 
Under whose lowly roof thou hast voutsaf ed 
To enter, and these earthly fruits to taste, 
Food not of Angels, yet accepted so 
As that more willingly thou couldst not 

seem 
At Heaven's high feasts to have fed: yet 
what compare ! " 
To whom the winged Hierarch re- 
plied : — 
" O Adam, one Almighty is, from whom 
All things proceed, and up to him return, 470 
If not depraved from good, created all 
Such to perfection; one first matter all, 
Indued with various forms, various degrees 
Of substance, and, in things that live, of 

life; 
But more refined, more spiritous and pure, 
As nearer to him placed or nearer tending 



BOOK FIFTH 



*59 



Each in their several active spheres as- 
signed, 
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds 
Proportioned to each kind. So from the 

root 
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence 
the leaves 4S0 

More aerie, last the bright consummate 

flower 
Spirits odorous breathes: flowers and their 

fruit, 
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sub- 
limed, 
To vital spirits aspire, to animal, 
To intellectual; give both life and sense, 
Fancy and understanding; whence the Soul 
Reason receives, and Reason is her being, 
Discursive, or Intuitive: Discourse 
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours, 4 8 9 
Differing but in degree, of kind the same. 
Wonder not, then, what God for you saw 

good 
If I refuse not, but convert, as you, 
To proper substance. Time may come 

when Men 
With Angels may participate, and find 
No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare; 
And from these corporal nutriments, per- 
haps, 
Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit, 
Improved by tract of time, and winged 

ascend 
Ethereal, as we, or may at choice 
Here or in heavenly paradises dwell, 5°o 
If ye be found obedient, and retain 
Unalterably firm his love entire 
Whose progeny you are. Meanwhile enjoy, 
Your fill, what happiness this happy state 
Can comprehend, incapable of more." 
To whom the Patriarch of Mankind re- 
plied : — 
" O favourable Spirit, propitious guest, 
Well hast thou taught the way that might 

direct 
Our knowledge, and the scale of Nature 

set 
From centre to circumference, whereon, 510 
In contemplation of created things, 
By steps we may ascend to God. But say, 
What meant that caution joined, If ye be 

found 
Obedient? Can we want obedience, then, 
To him, or possibly his love desert, 
Who formed us from the dust, and placed 
us here 



Full to the utmost measure of what bliss 
Human desires can seek or apprehend ? " 
To whom the Angel: — " Son of Heaven 

and Earth, 
Attend ! That thou art happy, owe to 

God; 520 

That thou continuest such, owe to thyself, 
That is, to thy obedience ; therein stand. 
This was that caution given thee; be ad- 
vised. 
God made thee perfect, not immutable; 
And good he made thee; but to persevere 
He left it in thy power — ordained thy 

will 
By nature free, not over-ruled by fate 
Inextricable, or strict necessity. 
Our voluntary service he requires, 
Not our necessitated. Such with him 530 
Finds no acceptance, nor can find; for how 
Can hearts not free be tried whether they 

serve 
Willing or no, who will but what they must 
By destiny, and can no other choose ? 
Myself, and all the Angelic Host, that 

stand 
In sight of God enthroned, our happy state 
Hold, as you yours, while our obedience 

holds. 
On other surety none: freely we serve, 
Because we freely love, as in our will 
To love or not; in this we stand or fall. 540 
And some are fallen, to disobedience fallen, 
And so from Heaven to deepest Hell. O 

fall 
From what high state of bliss into what 

woe ! " 
To whom our great Progenitor: — " Thy 

words 
Attentive, and with more delighted ear, 
Divine instructor, I have heard, than when 
Cherubic songs by night from neighbouring 

hills 
Aerial music send. Nor knew I not 
To be, both will and deed, created free. 
Yet that we never shall forget to love 55° 
Our Maker, and obey him whose command 
Single is yet so just, my constant thoughts 
Assured me, and still assure; though what 

thou tell'st 
Hath passed in Heaven some doubt within 

me move, 
But more desire to hear, if thou consent, 
The full relation, which must needs be 

strange, 
Worthy of sacred silence to be heard. 



i6o 



PARADISE LOST 



And we have yet large day, for scarce the 

Sun 
Hath finished half his journey, and scarce 

begins 
His other half in the great zone of hea- 
ven." 560 
Thus Adam made request; and Raphael, 
After short pause assenting, thus began: — 
" High matter thou injoin'st me, O prime 
of Men — 
Sad task and hard; for how shall I relate 
To human sense the invisible exploits 
Of warring Spirits ? how, without remorse, 
The ruin of so many, glorious once 
And perfet while they stood ? how, last, 

unfold 
The secrets of another world, perhaps 
Not lawful to reveal ? Yet for thy good 570 
This is dispensed; and what surmounts the 

reach 
Of human sense I shall delineate so, 
By likening spiritual to corporal forms, 
As may express them best — though what 

if Earth 
Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things 

therein 
Each to other like more than on Earth is 
thought ! 
" As yet this World was not, and Chaos 
wild 
Reigned where these heavens now rowl, 

where Earth now rests 
Upon her centre poised, when on a day 
(For Time, though in Eternity, applied 580 
To motion, measures all things durable 
By present, past, and future), on such day 
As Heaven's great year brings forth, the 

empyreal host 
Of Angels, by imperial summons called, 
Innumerable before the Almighty's throne 
Forthwith from all the ends of Heaven ap- 
peared 
Under their hierarchs in orders bright. 
Ten thousand thousand ensigns high ad- 
vanced, 
Standards and gonfalons, 'twixt van and 

rear 
Stream in the air, and for distinction 
serve 590 

Of hierarchies, of orders, and degrees; 
Or in their glittering tissues bear imblazed 
Holy memorials, acts of zeal and love 
Recorded eminent. Thus when in orbs 
Of circuit inexpressible they stood, 
Orb within orb, the Father Infinite, 



By whom in bliss imbosomed sat the Son, 
Amidst, as from a flaming Mount, whose 

top 
Brightness had made invisible, thus spake: 
" ' Hear, all ye Angels, Progeny of 
Light, 600 

Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Vir- 
tues, Powers, 
Hear my decree, which unrevoked shall 

stand ! 
This day I have begot whom I declare 
My only Son, and on this holy hill 
Him have anointed, whom ye now behold 
At my right hand. Your head I him ap- 
point, 
And by myself have sworn to him shall 

bow 
All knees in Heaven, and shall confess him 

Lord. 
Under his great vicegerent reign abide, 
United as one individual soul, 610 

For ever happy. Him who disobeys 
Me disobeys, breaks union, and, that day, 
Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls 
Into utter darkness, deep ingulfed, his place 
Ordained without redemption, without end.' 
" So spake the Omnipotent, and with his 
words 
All seemed well pleased; all seemed, but 

were not all. 
That day, as other solemn days, they spent 
In song and dance about the sacred Hill — 
Mystical dance, which yonder starry 
sphere 620 

Of planets and of fixed in all her wheels 
Resembles nearest; mazes intricate, 
Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular 
Then most when most irregular they seem; 
And in their motions harmony divine 
So smooths her charming tones that God's 

own ear 
Listens delighted. Evening now approached 
(For we have also our evening and our 

morn — 
We ours for change delectable, not need) ; 
Forthwith from dance to sweet repast they 
turn 630 

Desirous: all in circles as they stood, 
Tables are set, and on a sudden piled 
With Angels' food; and rubied nectar flows 
In pearl, in diamond, and massy gold, 
Fruit of delicious vines, the growth of Hea- 
ven. 
On flowers reposed, and with fresh flower- 
ets crowned, 



BOOK FIFTH 



161 



They eat, they drink, and in communion 

sweet 
Quaff immortality and joy, secure 
Of surfeit where full measure only bounds 
Excess, before the all-bounteous King, who 
showered 640 

With copious hand, rejoicing in their joy. 
Now when ambrosial Night, with clouds 

exhaled 
From that high mount of God whence light 

and shade 
Spring both, the face of brightest Heaven 

had changed 
To grateful twilight (for Night comes not 

there 
In darker veil), and roseate dews disposed 
All but the unsleeping eyes of God to rest, 
Wide over all the plain, and wider far 
Than all this globous Earth in plain out- 
spread 
(Such are the Courts of God), the Angelic 
throng, 650 

Dispersed in bands and files, their camp 

extend 
By living streams among the trees of life — 
Pavilions numberless and sudden reared, 
Celestial tabernacles, where they slept, 
Fanned with cool winds ; save those who, in 

their course, 
Melodious hymns about the sovran Throne 
Alternate all night long. But not so waked 
Satan — so call him now; his former name 
Is heard no more in Heaven. He, of the 

first, 
If not the first Archangel, great in 
power, 660 

In favour, and preeminence, yet fraught 
With envy against the Son of God, that 

day 
Honoured by his great Father, and pro- 
claimed 
Messiah, King Anointed, could not bear, 
Through pride, that sight, and thought him- 
self impaired. 
Deep malice thence conceiving and disdain, 
Soon as midnight brought on the dusky 

hour 
Friendliest to sleep and silence, he resolved 
With all his legions to dislodge, and leave 
Unworshiped, unobeyed, the Throne su- 
preme, 670 
Contemptuous, and, his next subordinate 
Awakening, thus to him in secret spake : — 
" ' Sleep'st thou, companion dear ? what 
sleep can close 



Thy eyelids ? and rememberest what de- 
cree, 
Of yesterday, so late hath passed the lips 
Of Heaven's Almighty ? Thou to me thy 

thoughts 
Wast wont, I mine to thee was wont, to 

impart; 
Both waking we were one; how, then, can 

now 
Thy sleep dissent? New laws thou seest 

imposed; 
New laws from him who reigns new minds 
may raise 680 

In us who serve — new counsels, to de- 
bate 
What doubtful may ensue. More in this 

place 
To utter is not safe. Assemble thou 
Of all those myriads which we lead the 

chief; 
Tell them that, by command, ere yet dim 

Night 
Her shadowy cloud withdraws, I am to 

haste, 
And all who under me their banners wave, 
Homeward with flying march where we 

possess 
The Quarters of the North, there to pre- 
pare 
Fit entertainment to receive our King, 690 
The great Messiah, and his new commands, 
Who speedily through all the Hierarchies 
Intends to pass triumphaut, and give laws.' 
" So spake the false Archangel, and in- 
fused 
Bad influence into the unwary breast 
Of his associate. He together calls, 
Or several one by one, the regent Powers, 
Under him regent; tells, as he was taught, 
That, the Most High commanding, now ere 

Night, 
Now ere dim Night had disincumbered 
Heaven, 700 

The great hierarchal standard was to 

move; 
Tells the suggested cause, and casts be- 
tween 
Ambiguous words and jealousies, to sound 
Or taint integrity. But all obeyed 
The wonted signal, and superior voice 
Of their great Potentate ; for great indeed 
His name, and high was his degree in Hea- 
ven: 
His countenance, as the morning-star that 
guides 



162 



PARADISE LOST 



The starry flock, allured them, and with 

lies 
Drew after him the third part of Heaven's 

host. 71° 

Meanwhile, the Eternal Eye, whose sight 

discerns 
Abstrusest thoughts, from forth his holy 

Mount, 
And from within the golden Lamps that 

burn 
Nightly before him, saw without their 

light 
Rebellion rising — saw in whom, how 

spread 
Among the Sons of Morn, what multitudes 
Were banded to oppose his high decree; 
And, smiling, to his only Son thus said: — 
" ' Son, thou in whom my glory I behold 
In full resplendence, Heir of all my might, 
Nearly it now concerns us to be sure 721 
Of our Omnipotence, and with what arms 
We mean to hold what anciently we claim 
Of deity or empire: such a foe 
Is rising, who intends to erect his throne 
Equal to ours, throughout the spacious 

North; 
Nor so content, hath in his thought to try 
In battle what our power is or our right. 
Let us advise, and to this hazard draw 
With speed what force is left, and all im- 

ploy 730 

In our defence, lest unawares we lose 
This our high place, our Sanctuary, our 

Hill.' 
" To whom the Son, with calm aspect' and 

clear 
Lightening divine, ineffable, serene, 
Made answer: — ' Mighty Father, thou thy 

foes 
Justly hast in derision, and secure 
Laugh'st at their vain designs and tumults 

vain — 
Matter to me of glory, whom their hate 
Illustrates, when they see all regal power 
Given me to quell their pride, and in event 
Know whether I be dextrous to subdue 741 
Thy rebels, or be found the worst in Hea- 
ven.' 
"So spake the Son; but Satan with his 

Powers 
Far was advanced on winged speed, an host 
Innumerable as the stars of night, 
Or stars of morning, dew-drops which the 

sun 
Impearls on every leaf and every flower. 



Regions they passed, the mighty regencies 
Of Seraphim and Potentates and Thrones 
In their triple degrees — regions to which 
All thy dominion, Adam, is no more 751 
Than what this garden is to all the earth 
And all the sea, from one entire globose 
Stretched into longitude; which having 

passed, 
At length into the limits of the North 
They came, and Satan to his royal seat 
High on a hill, far-blazing, as a mount 
Raised on a mount, with pyramids and 

towers 
From diamond quarries hewn and rocks of 

gold — 
The palace of great Lucifer (so call 760 
That structure, in the dialect of men 
Interpreted) which, not long after, he, 
Affecting all equality with God, 
In imitation of that mount whereon 
Messiah was declared in sight of Heaven, 
The Mountain of the Congregation called; 
For thither he assembled all his train, 
Pretending so commanded to consult 
About the great reception of their King 
Thither to come, and with calumnious art 
Of counterfeited truth thus held their 
ears: — 771 

" ' Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, 
Virtues, Powers — 
If these magnific titles yet remain 
Not merely titular, since by decree 
Another now hath to himself ingrossed 
All power, and us eclipsed under the name 
Of King Anointed ; for whom all this haste 
Of midnight march, and hurried meeting 

here, 
This only to consult, how we may best, 
With what may be devised of honours 
new, 780 

Receive him coming to receive from us 
Knee-tribute yet unpaid, prostration vile ! 
Too much to one ! but double how en- 
dured — 
To one and to his image now proclaimed ? 
But what if better counsels might erect 
Our minds, and teach us to cast off this 

yoke ! 
Will ye submit your necks, and choose to 

bend 
The supple knee ? Ye will not, if I trust 
To know ye right, or if ye know yourselves 
Natives and Sons of Heaven possessed be- 
fore 790 
By none, and, if not equal all, yet free, 



BOOK FIFTH 



163 



Equally free; for orders and degrees 
Jar not with liberty, but well consist. 
Who can in reason, then, or right, assume 
Monarchy over such as live by right 
His equals — if in power and splendour 

less, 
In freedom equal ? or can introduce 
Law and edict on us, who without law 
Err not ? much less for this to be our 

Lord, 
And look for adoration, to the abuse 800 
Of those imperial titles which assert 
Our being ordained to govern, not to 

serve ! ' 
" Thus far his bold discourse without 

control 
Had audience, when, among the Seraphim, 
Abdiel, than whom none with more zeal 

adored 
The Deity, and divine commands obeyed, 
Stood up, and in a flame of zeal severe 
The current of his fury thus opposed: — 
" ' O argument blasphe'mous, false, and 

proud — 
Words which no ear ever to hear in Hea- 
ven 810 
Expected; least of all from thee, ingrate, 
In place thyself so high above thy peers ! 
Canst thou with impious obloquy condemn 
The just decree of God, pronounced and 

sworn, 
That to his only Son, by right endued 
With regal sceptre, every soul in Heaven 
Shall bend the knee, and in that honour 

due 
Confess him rightful King ? Unjust, thou 

say'st, 
Flatly unjust, to bind with laws the free, 
And equal over equals to let reign, 820 

One over all with unsucceeded power ! 
Shalt thou give law to God ? shalt thou 

dispute 
With Him the points of liberty, who made 
Thee what thou art, and formed the Powers 

of Heaven 
Such as he pleased, and circumscribed their 

being ? 
Yet, by experience taught, we know how 

good, 
And of our good and of our dignity 
How provident, he is — how far from 

thought 
To make us less; bent rather to exalt 
Our happy state, under one Head more 

near 830 



United. But — to grant it thee unjust 
That equal over equals monarch reign — 
Thyself, though great and glorious, dost 

thou count, 
Or all angelic nature joined in one, 
Equal to him, begotten Son, by whom, 
As by his Word, the mighty Father made 
All things, even thee, and all the Spirits of 

Heaven 
By him created in their bright degrees, 
Crowned them with glory, and to their 

glory named 
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Vir- 
tues, Powers ? — 840 
Essential Powers; nor by his reign ob- 
scured, 
But more illustrious made; since he, the 

head, 
One of our number thus reduced becomes; 
His laws our laws; all honour to him done 
Returns our own. Cease, then, this im- 
pious rage, 
And tempt not these; but hasten to ap- 
pease 
The incensed Father and the incensed Son 
While pardon may be found, in time be- 
sought.' 
"So spake the fervent Angel; but his 
zeal 849 

None seconded, as out of season judged, 
Or singular and rash. Whereat rejoiced 
The Apostat, and, more haughty, thus 
replied: — 
" ' That we were formed, then, say'st 
thou ? and the work 
Of secondary hands, by task transferred 
From Father to his Son ? Strange point 

and new ! 
Doctrine which we would know whence 

learned ! Who saw 
When this creation was ? Remember'st 

thou 
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee 

being ? 
We know no time when we were not as 

now; 
Know none before us, self-begot, self- 
raised 860 
By our own quickening power when fatal 

course 
Had circled his full orb, the birth mature 
Of this our native Heaven, Ethereal Sons. 
Our puissance is our own; our own right 

hand 
Shall teach us highest deeds, by proof to try 



164 



PARADISE LOST 



Who is our equal. Then thou shalt behold 
Whether by supplication we intend 
Address, and to begirt the Almighty 

Throne 
Beseeching or besieging. This report, 
These tidings, carry to the Anointed King; 
And fly, ere evil intercept thy flight.' 871 
" He said ; and, as the sound of waters 
deep, 
Hoarse murmur echoed to his words ap- 
plause 
Through the infinite Host. Nor less for that 
The flaming Seraph, fearless, though alone, 
Encompassed round with foes, thus an- 
swered bold : — 
" * O alienate from God, O Spirit ac- 
cursed, 
Forsaken of all good ! I see thy fall 
Determined, and thy hapless crew involved 
In this perfidious fraud, contagion spread 
Both of thy crime and punishment. Hence- 
forth 881 
No more be troubled how to quit the yoke 
Of God's Messiah. Those indulgent laws 
Will not be now voutsafed; other decrees 
Against thee are gone forth without recall; 
That golden sceptre which thou didst re- 
ject 



Is now an iron rod to bruise and break 
Thy disobedience. Well thou didst ad- 
vise; 
Yet not for thy advice or threats I fly 
These wicked tents devoted, lest the wrauth 
Impendent, raging into sudden flame, 891 
Distinguish not: for soon expect to feel 
His thunder on thy head, devouring fire. 
Then who created thee lamenting learn 
When who can uncreate thee thou shalt 
know.' 
"So spake the Seraph Abdiel, faithful 
found; 
Among the faithless faithful only he; 
Among innumerable false unmoved, 
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, 
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal; 900 
Nor number nor example with him wrought 
To swerve from truth, or change his con- 
stant mind, 
Though single. From amidst them forth 

he passed, 
Long way through hostile scorn, which he 

sustained 
Superior, nor of violence feared aught; 
And with retorted scorn his back he turned 
On those proud towers, to swift destruction 
doomed." 



BOOK VI 

THE ARGUMENT 

Raphael continues to relate how Michael and Gabriel 
were sent forth to battle against Satan and his Angels. 
Thft first fight dftap.rib.gd_; Satan and his Powers retire 
under night. He calls a council; invents^ devilish en- 
gines, which, in the second day's fight, put Michael 
and his Angels to some disorder ; but they at length, 
pulling up mountains, overwhelmed both the force and 
machines of Satan. Yet, the tumult not so ending, God, 
on the third day, sends Messiah his Son, for whom he 
had reserved the glory of that victory. He, in the 
power of his Father, coming to the place, and causing | 
all his legions to stand still on either side, with his 
chariot and thunder driving into the midst of his ene- 
mies, pursues them, unable to resist, towards the wall 
of Heaven ; which opening, they leap down with horror 
and confusion into the place of pimishment prepared 
for them in the Deep. Messiah returns with triumph 
to his Father. 

" All night the dreadless Angel, unpur- 

sued, 
Through Heaven's wide champaign held 

his way, till Morn, 
Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy 

hand 
Unbarred the gates of Light. There is a 

cave 



Within the Mount of God, fast by his 

Throne, 
Where Light and Darkness in perpetual 

round 
Lodge and dislodge by turns — which makes 

through Heaven 
Grateful vicissitude, like day and night; 
Light issues forth, and at the other door 
Obsequious Darkness enters, till her hour 
To veil the heaven, though darkness there 

might well n 

Seem twilight here. And now went forth 

the Morn 
Such as in highest heaven, arrayed in gold 
Empyreal; from before her vanished Night, 
Shot through with orient beams; when all 

the plain 
Covered with thick embattled squadrons 

bright, 
Chariots, and flaming arms, and fiery 

steeds, 
Reflecting blaze on blaze, first met his 

view. 
War he perceived, war in procinct, and 

found 



BOOK SIXTH 



165 






Already known what he for news had 
thought 20 

To have reported. Gladly then he mixed 
Among those friendly Powers, who him re- 
ceived 
With joy and acclamations loud, that one, 
That of so many myriads fallen yet one, 
Returned not lost. On to the sacred Hill 
They led him, high applauded, and present 
Before the Seat supreme; from whence a 

voice, 
From midst a golden cloud, thus mild was 
heard: — 
" ' Servant of God, well done ! Well 
hast thou fought 
The better fight, who single hast main- 
tained 30 
Against revolted multitudes the cause 
Of truth, in word, mightier than they in 

arms, 
And for the testimony of truth hast borne 
Universal reproach, far worse to bear 
Than violence ; for this was all thy care — 
To stand approved in sight of God, though 

worlds 
Judged thee perverse. The easier con- 
quest now 
Remains thee — aided by this host of friends, 
Back on thy foes more glorious to return 
Than scorned thou didst depart; and to 
subdue 40 

By force who reason for their law refuse — 
Right reason for their law, and for their 

. Kin £ 
Messiah, who by right of merit reigns. 

Go, Michael, of celestial armies prince, 
And thou, in military prowess next, 
Gabriel; lead forth to battle these my sons 
Invincible; lead forth my armed Saints, 
By thousands and by millions ranged for 

fight, 
Equal in number to that godless crew 
Rebellious. Them with fire and hostile 
arms 50 

Fearless assault; and, to the brow of Hea- 
ven 
Pursuing, drive them out from God and 

bliss 
Into their place of punishment, the gulf 
Of Tartarus, which ready opens wide 
His fiery chaos to receive their fall.' 

" So spake the Sovran Voice ; and clouds 
began 
To darken all the Hill, and smoke to rowl 
In dusky wreaths reluctant flames, the sign 



Of wrauth awaked ; nor with less dread the 

loud 
Ethereal trumpet from on high gan blow. 
At which command the Powers Militant 61 
That stood for Heaven, in mighty quadrate 

joined 
Of union irresistible, moved on 
In silence their bright legions to the sound 
Of instrumental harmony, that breathed 
Heroic ardour to adventrous deeds 
Under their godlike leaders, in the cause 
Of God and his Messiah. On they move, 
Indissolubly firm ; nor obvious hill, 
Nor straitening vale, nor wood, nor stream, 

divides 70 

Their perfet ranks; for high above the 

ground 
Their march was, and the passive air up- 
bore 
Their nimble tread. As when the total 

kind 
Of birds, in orderly array on wing, 
Came summoned over Eden to receive 
Their names of thee ; so over many a tract 
Of Heaven they marched, and many a pro- 
vince wide, 
Tenfold the length of this terrene. At 

last, 
Far in the horizon, to the north, appeared 
From skirt to skirt a fiery region, stretched 
In battailous aspect; and, nearer view, 81 
Bristled with upright beams innumerable 
Of rigid spears, and helmets thronged, and 

shields 
Various, with boastful argument portrayed, 
The banded Powers of Satan hasting on 
With furious expedition: for they weened 
That self-same day, by fight or by surprise, 
To win the Mount of God, and on his 

Throne 
To set the envier of his state, the proud 
Aspirer. But their thoughts proved fond 

and vain 9° 

In the mid- way; though strange to us it 

seemed 
At first that Angel should with Angel war, 
And in fierce hosting meet, who wont to 

meet 
So oft in festivals of joy and love 
Unanimous, as sons of one great Sire, 
Hymning the Eternal Father. But the 

shout 
Of battle now began, and rushing sound 
Of onset ended soon each milder thought. 
High in the midst, exalted as a God, 



1 66 



PARADISE LOST 



The Apostat in his sun-bright chariot sat, 
Idol of majesty divine, enclosed 101 

With flaming Cherubim and golden shields; 
Then lighted from his gorgeous Throne — 

for now 
'Twixt host and host but narrow space was 

left, 
A dreadful interval, and front to front 
Presented stood, in terrible array 
Of hideous length. Before the cloudy van, 
On the rough edge of battle ere it joined, 
Satan, with vast and haughty strides ad- 
vanced, 
Came towering, armed in adamant and 
gold. no 

Abdiel that sight endured not, where he 

stood 
Among the mightiest, bent on highest 

deeds, 
And thus his own undaunted heart ex- 
plores: — 
" ' O Heaven ! that such resemblance of 
the Highest 
Should yet remain, where faith and realty 
Remain not ! Wherefore should not 

strength and might 
There fail where virtue fails, or weakest 

prove 
Where boldest, though to sight unconquer- 
able ? 
His puissance, trusting in the Almighty's 
aid, 1 19 

I mean to try, whose reason I have tried 
Unsound and false; nor is it aught but just 
That he who in debate of truth hath won 
Should win in arms, in both disputes alike 
Victor. Though brutish that contest' and 

foul, 
When reason hath to deal with force, yet 

so 
Most reason is that reason overcome.' 
"So pondering, and from his armed 
peers 
Forth-stepping opposite, half-way he met 
His daring foe, at this prevention more 
Incensed, and thus securely him defied: — 
" ' Proud, art thou met ? Thy hope was 
to have reached 131 

The highth of thy aspiring unopposed — 
The Throne of God unguarded, and his 

side 
Abandoned at the terror of thy power 
Or potent tongue. Fool ! not to think how 

vain 
Against the Omnipotent to rise in arms; 



Who, out of smallest things, could without 

end 
Have raised incessant armies to defeat 
Thy folly; or with solitary hand, 
Reaching beyond all limit, at one blow, 140 
Unaided could have finished thee, and 

whelmed 
Thy legions under darkness ! But thou 

seest 
All are not of thy train; there be who 

faith 
Prefer, and piety to God, though then 
To thee not visible when I alone 
Seemed in thy world erroneous to dissent 
From all: my Sect thou seest; now learn 

too late 
How few sometimes may know when thou- 
sands err.' 
" Whom the grand Foe, with scornful 

eye askance, 
Thus answered : — '111 for thee, but in 

wished hour 150 

Of my revenge, first sought for, thou re- 

turn'st 
From flight, seditious Angel, to receive 
Thy merited reward, the first assay 
Of this right hand provoked, since first that 

tongue, 
Inspired with contradiction, durst oppose 
A third part of the Gods, in synod met 
Their deities to assert: who, while they feel 
Vigour divine within them, can allow 
Omnipotence to none. But well thou 

com'st 
Before thy fellows, ambitious to win 160 
From me some plume, that thy success may 

show 
Destruction to the rest. This pause be- 
tween 
(Unanswered lest thou boast) to let thee 

know. — 
At first I thought that Liberty and Heaven 
To heavenly souls had been all one; but 

now 
I see that most through sloth had rather 

serve, 
Ministering Spirits, trained up in feast and 

song: 
Such hast thou armed, the minstrelsy of 

heaven — 
Servility with freedom to contend, 
As both their deeds compared this day 

shall prove.' 170 

" To whom, in brief, thus Abdiel stern 

replied: — 



BOOK SIXTH 



167 



' Apostat ! still thou err'st, nor end wilt 

find 
Of erring, from the path of truth remote. 
Unjustly thou deprav'st it with the name 
Of servitude, to serve whom God ordains, 
Or Nature: God and Nature bid the same, 
When he who rules is worthiest, and excels 
Them whom he governs. This is servi- 
tude — 
To serve the unwise, or him who hath re- 
belled 
Against his worthier, as thine now serve 

thee, 180 

Thyself not free, but to thyself enthralled; 
Yet lewdly dar'st our ministering upbraid. 
Reign thou in Hell, thy kingdom; let me 

serve 
In Heaven God ever blest, and his divine 
Behests obey, worthiest to be obeyed. 
Yet chains in Hell, not realms, expect: 

meanwhile, 
From me returned, as erst thou saidst, 

from flight, 
This greeting on thy impious crest receive.' 
" So saying, a noble stroke he lifted 

high, 
Which hung not, but so swift with tempest 

fell 190 

On the proud crest of Satan that no sight, 
Nor motion of swift thought, less could his 

shield, 
Such ruin intercept. Ten paces huge 
He back recoiled; the tenth on bended 

knee 
His massy spear upstayed: as if, on earth, 
Winds under ground, or waters forcing 

way, 
Sidelong had pushed a mountain from his 

seat, 
Half-sunk with all his pines. Amazement 

seized 
The rebel Thrones, but greater rage, to see 
Thus foiled their mightiest; ours joy filled, 

and shout, 200 

Presage of victory, and fierce desire 
Of battle : whereat Michael bid sound 
The Archangel trumpet. Through the vast 

of Heaven 
It sounded, and the faithful armies rung 
Hosannah to the Highest; nor stood at 

gaze 
The adverse legions, nor less hideous joined 
The horrid shock. Now storming fury rose, 
And clamour such as heard in Heaven till 



Was never; arms on armour clashing 

brayed 
Horrible discord, and the madding wheels 
Of brazen chariots raged; dire was the 

noise 211 

Of conflict; overhead the dismal hiss 
Of fiery darts in flaming volleys flew, 
And, flying, vaulted either host with fire. . 
So under fiery cope together rushed 
Both battles main with ruinous assault 
And inextinguishable rage. All Heaven 
Resounded; and, had Earth been then, all 

Earth 
Had to her centre shook. What wonder, 

when 
Millions of fierce encountering Angels 

fought 220 

On either side, the least of whom could 

wield 
These elements, and arm him with the 

force 
Of all their regions ? How much more of 

power 
Army against army numberless to raise 
Dreadful combustion warring, and disturb, 
Though not destroy, their happy native 

seat; 
Had not the Eternal King Omnipotent 
From his strong hold of Heaven high over- 
ruled 
And limited their might, though numbered 

such 
As each divided legion might have seemed 
A numerous host, in strength each armed 

hand 231 

A legion ! Led in fight, yet leader seemed 
Each warrior single as in chief; expert 
When to advance, or stand, or turn the 

sway 
Of battle, open when, and when to close 
The ridges of grim war. No thought of 

flight, 
None of retreat, no unbecoming deed 
That argued fear; each on himself relied 
As only in his arm the moment lay 
Of victory. Deeds of eternal fame 240 

Were done, but infinite; for wide was 

spread 
That war, and various: sometimes on firm 

ground 
A standing fight; then, soaring on main 

wing, 
Tormented all the air; all air seemed then 
Conflicting fire. Long time in even scale 
The battle hung; till Satan, who that day 



i68 



PARADISE LOST 



Prodigious power had shown, and met in 

arms 
No equal, ranging through the dire attack 
Of fighting Seraphim confused, at length 
Saw where the sword of Michael smote, 
and felled 250 

Squadrons at once: with huge two-handed 

sway 
Brandished aloft, the horrid edge came 

down 
Wide-wasting. Such destruction to with- 
stand 
He hasted, and opposed the rocky orb 
Of tenfold adamant, his ample shield, 
A vast circumference. At his approach 
The great Archangel from his warlike toil 
Surceased, and, glad, as hoping hereto end 
Intestine war in Heaven, the Arch-foe sub- 
dued, 
Or captive dragged in chains, with hostile 
frown 260 

And visage all inflamed, first thus be- 
gan: — 
" ' Author of Evil, unknown till thy re- 
volt, 
Unnamed in Heaven, now plenteous as thou 

seest 
These acts of hateful strife — hateful to 

all, 
Though heaviest, by just measure, on thy- 
self 
And thy adherents — how hast thou dis- 
turbed 
Heaven's blessed peace, and into Nature 

brought 
Misery, uncreated till the crime 
Of thy rebellion ! how hast thou instilled 
Thy malice into thousands, once upright 
And faithful, now proved false ! But think 
not here 271 

To trouble holy rest; Heaven casts thee 

out 
From all her confines; Heaven, the seat of 

bliss, 
Brooks not the works of violence and war. 
Hence, then, and Evil go with thee along, 
Thy offspring, to the place of Evil, Hell — 
Thou and thy wicked crew ! there mingle 

broils ! 
Ere this avenging sword begin thy doom, 
Or some more sudden vengeance, winged 

from God, 
Precipitate thee with augmented pain.' 280 
" So spake the Prince of Angels; to whom 
thus 



The Adversary : — ' Nor think thou with 

wind 
Of airy threats to awe whom yet with 

deeds 
Thou canst not. Hast thou turned the 

least of these 
To flight — or, if to fall, but that they rise 
Un vanquished — easier to transact with me 
That thou shouldst hope, imperious, and 

with threats 
To chase me hence ? Err not that so shall 

end 
The strife which thou call'st evil, but we 

style 
The strife of glory ; which we mean to win, 
Or turn this Heaven itself into the Hell 291 
Thou f ablest; here, however, to dwell free, 
If not to reign. Meanwhile, thy utmost 

force — 
And join Him named Almighty to thy 

aid — 
I fly not, but have sought thee far and 

nigh.' 
" They ended parle, and both addressed 

for fight 
Unspeakable; for who, though with the 

tongue 
Of Angels, can relate, or to what things 
Liken on Earth conspicuous, that may lift 
Human imagination to such highth 300 

Of godlike power ? for likest gods they 

seemed, 
Stood they or moved, in stature, motion, 

arms, 
Fit to decide the empire of great Heaven. 
Now waved their fiery swords, and in the 

air 
Made horrid circles; two broad suns their 

shields 
Blazed opposite, while Expectation stood 
In horror; from each hand with speed re- 
tired, 
Where erst was thickest fight, the Angelic 

throng, 
And left large field, unsafe within the 

wind 309 

Of such commotion: such as (to set forth 
Great things by small) if, Nature's concord 

broke, 
Among the constellations war were sprung, 
Two planets, rushing from aspect' malign 
Of fiercest opposition, in mid sky 
Should combat, and their jarring spheres 

confound. 
Together both, with next to almighty arm 



BOOK SIXTH 



169 



Uplifted imminent, one stroke they aimed 
That might determine, and not need repeat 
As not of power, at once; nor odds ap- 
peared 
In might or swift prevention. But the 
sword 320 

Of Michael from the armoury of God 
Was given him tempered so that neither 

keen 
Nor solid might resist that edge : it met 
The sword of Satan, with steep force to 

smite 
Descending, and in half cut sheer; nor 

stayed, 
But, with swift wheel reverse, deep enter- 
ing, shared 
All his right side. Then Satan first knew 

pain, 
And writhed him to and fro convolved; so 

sore 
The griding sword with discontinuous wound 
Passed through him. But the ethereal sub- 
stance closed, • 330 
Not long divisible; and from the gash 
A stream of nectarous humour issuing 

flowed 
Sanguin, such as celestial Spirits may bleed, 
And all his armour stained, erewhile so 

bright, 
Forthwith, on all sides, to his aid was run 
By Angels many and strong, who inter- 



Defence, while others bore him on their 

shields 
Back to his chariot where it stood retired 
From off the files of war: there they him 

laid 
Gnashing for anguish, and despite, and 

shame 340 

To find himself not matchless, and his 

pride 
Humbled by such rebuke, so far beneath 
His confidence to equal God in power. 
Yet soon he healed; for Spirits, that live 

throughout 
Vital in every part — not, as frail Man, 
In entrails, heart or head, liver or reins — 
Cannot but by annihilating die; 
Nor in their liquid texture mortal wound 
Receive, no more than can the fluid air: 
All heart they live, all head, all eye, all 

ear, 3 50 

All intellect, all sense ; and as they please 
They limb themselves, and colour, shape, 



Assume, as likes them best, condense or 

rare. 
" Meanwhile, in other parts, like deeds 

deserved 
Memorial, where the might of Gabriel 

fought, 
And with fierce ensigns pierced the deep 

array 
Of Moloch, furious king, who him defied, 
And at his chariot - wheels to drag him 

bound 
Threatened, nor from the Holy One of 

Heaven 
Refreined his tongue blasphemous, but 

anon, 360 

Down cloven to the waist, with shattered 

arms 
And uncouth pain fled bellowing. On each 

wing 
Uriel and Raphael his vaunting foe, 
Though huge and in a rock of diamond 

armed, 
Vanquished — Adramelech and Asmadai, 
Two potent Thrones, that to be less than 

Gods 
Disdained, but meaner thoughts learned in 

their flight, 
Mangled with ghastly wounds through plate 

and mail. 
Nor stood unmindful Abdiel to annoy 
The atheist crew, but with redoubled blow 
Ariel, and Arioch, and the violence 371 

Of Ramiel, scorched and blasted, over- 
threw. 
I might relate of thousands, and their 

names 
Eternize here on Earth; but those elect 
Angels, contented with their fame in Hea- 
ven, 
Seek not the praise of men: the other sort, 
In might though wondrous and in acts of 

war, 
Nor of renown less eager, yet by doom 
Cancelled from Heaven and sacred mem- 
ory* 
Nameless in dark oblivion let them dwell 
For strength from truth divided, and from 

just, 381 

Illaudable, nought merits but dispraise 
And ignominy, yet to glory aspires, 
Vain-glorious, and through infamy seeks 

fame: 
Therefore eternal silence be their doom ! 
" And now, their mightiest quelled, the 

battle swerved, 



170 



PARADISE LOST 



With many an inroad gored; deformed 

rout 
Entered, and foul disorder; all the ground 
With shivered armour strowu, and on a 

heap 
Chariot and charioter lay overturned, 390 
And fiery foaming steeds; what stood re- 
coiled, 
O'er - wearied, through the faint Satanic 

host, 
Defensive scarce, or with pale fear sur- 
prised — 
Then first with fear surprised and sense of 

pain — 
Fled ignominious, to such evil brought 
By sin of disobedience, till that hour 
Not liable to fear, or flight, or pain. 
Far otherwise the inviolable Saints 
In cubic phalanx firm advanced entire, 
Invulnerable, impenetrably armed; 400 

Such high advantages their innocence 
Gave them above their foes — not to have 

sinned, 
Not to have disobeyed; in fight they stood 
Unwearied, unobnoxious to be pained 
By wound, though from their place by vio- 
lence moved. 
" Now Night her course began, and, over 
Heaven 
Inducing darkness, grateful truce imposed, 
And silence on the odious din of war. 
Under her cloudy covert both retired, 
Victor and vanquished. On the foughten 
field 410 

Michael and his Angels, prevalent 
Encamping, placed in guard their watches 

round, 
Cherubic waving fires: on the other part, 
Satan with his rebellious disappeared, 
Far in the dark dislodged, and, void of rest, 
His Potentates to council called by night, 
And in the midst thus undismayed be- 
gan: — 
" ' O now in danger tried, now known in 
arms 
Not to be overpowered, companions dear, 
Found worthy not of liberty alone — 420 
Too mean pretence — but, what we more 

affect, 
Honour, dominion, glory, and renown; 
Who have sustained one day in doubtful 

fight 
(And, if one day, why not eternal days ?) 
What Heaven's Lord had powerfullest to 
send 



Against us from about his Throne, and 

judged 
Sufficient to subdue us to his will, 
But proves not so: then fallible, it seems, 
Of future we may deem him, though till 

now 
Omniscient thought ! True is, less firmly 

armed, 430 

Some disadvantage we endured, and pain — 
Till now not known, but, known, as soon 

contemned ; 
Since now we find this our empyreal form 
Incapable of mortal injury, 
Imperishable, and, though pierced with 

wound, 
Soon closing, and by native vigour healed. 
Of evil, then, so small as easy think 
The remedy: perhaps more valid arms, 438 
Weapons more violent, when next we meet, 
May serve to better us and worse our foes, 
Or equal what between us made the odds, 
In nature none. If other hidden cause 
Left them superior, while we can preserve 
Unhurt our minds, and understanding 

sound, 
Due search and consultation will disclose.' 
" He sat; and in the assembly next up- 
stood 
Nisroch, of Principalities the prime. 
As one he stood escaped from cruel fight 
Sore toiled, his riven arms to havoc hewn, 
And, cloudy in aspect', thus answering 

spake : — 450 

" * Deliverer from new Lords, leader to 

free 
Enjoyment of our right as Gods ! yet hard 
For Gods, and too unequal work, we find 
Against unequal arms to fight in pain, 
Against unpained, impassive; from which 

evil 
Ruin must needs ensue. For what avails 
Valour or strength, though matchless, 

quelled with pain, 
Which all subdues, and makes remiss the 

hands 
Of mightiest ? Sense of pleasure we may 

well 
Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine, 
But live content — which is the calmest 

life; 461 

But pain is perfect misery, the worst 
Of evils, and, excessive, overturns 
All patience. He who, therefore, can in- 
vent 
With what more forcible we may offend 



BOOK SIXTH 



171 



Our yet unwounded enemies, or arm 
Ourselves with like defence, to me deserves 
No less than for deliverance what we owe.' 
" Whereto, with look composed, Satan 
replied: — 469 

* Not uninvented that, which thou aright 
Believ'st so main to our success, I bring. 
Which of us who beholds the bright sur- 
face' 
Of this ethereous mould whereon we 

stand — 
This continent of spacious Heaven, adorned 
With plant, fruit, flower ambrosial, gems 

and gold — 
Whose eye so superficially surveys 
These things as not to mind from whence 

they grow 
Deep under ground: materials dark and 

crude, 
Of spiritous and fiery spume, till, touched 
With Heaven's ray, and tempered, they 
shoot forth 480 

So beauteous, opening to the ambient light ? 
These in their dark nativity the Deep 
Shall yield us, pregnant with infernal 

flame; 
Which, into hollow engines long and round 
Thick-rammed, at the other bore with touch 

of fire 
Dilated and infuriate, shall send forth 
From far, with thundering noise, among 

our foes 
Such implements of mischief as shall dash 
To pieces and o'erwhelm whatever stands 
Adverse, that they shall fear we have dis- 
armed 490 
The Thunderer of his only dreaded bolt. 
Nor long shall be our labour; yet ere 

dawn 
Effect shall end our wish. Meanwhile re- 
vive; 
Abandon fear; to strength and counsel 

joined 
Think nothing hard, much less to be de- 
spaired.' 
"He ended; and his words their droop- 
ing cheer 
Enlightened, and their languished hope re- 
vived. 
The invention all admired, and each how 

he 
To be the inventor missed; so easy it 

seemed, 
Once found, which yet unfound most would 
have thought 500 



Impossible ! Yet, haply, of thy race, 
In future days, if malice should abound, 
Some one, intent on mischief, or inspired 
With devilish machination, might devise 
Like instrument to plague the sons of men 
For sin, on war and mutual slaughter bent. 
Forthwith from council to the work they 

flew; 
None arguing stood; innumerable hands 
Were ready; in a moment up they turned 
Wide the celestial soil, and saw beneath 510 
The originals of Nature in their crude 
Conception; sulphurous and nitrous foam 
They found, they mingled, and, with subtle 

art 
Concocted and adusted, they reduced 
To blackest grain, and into store conveyed. 
Part hidden veins digged up (nor hath this 

Earth 
Entrails unlike) of mineral and stone, 
Whereof to found their engines and their 

balls 
Of missive ruin; part incentive reed 519 
Provide, pernicious with one touch to fire. 
So all ere day - spring, under conscious 

Night, 
Secret they finished, and in order set, 
With silent circumspection, unespied. 
" Now, when fair Morn orient in Heaven 

appeared, 
Up rose the victor Angels, and to arms 
The matin trumpet sung. In arms they 

stood 
Of golden panoply, refulgent host, 
Soon banded; others from the dawning 

hills 
Looked round, and scouts each coast light- 
armed scour, 
Each quarter, to descry the distant foe, 530 
Where lodged, or whither fled, or if for 

fight, 
In motion or in halt. Him soon they met 
Under spread ensigns moving nigh, in slow 
But firm battalion: back with speediest 

sail 
Zophiel, of Cherubim the swiftest wing, 
Came flying, and in mid air aloud thus 

cried : — 
" ' Arm, Warriors, arm for fight ! The 

foe at hand, 
Whom fled we thought, will save us long 

pursuit 
This day; fear not his flight; so thick a 

cloud 
He comes, and settled in his face I see 540 



172 



PARADISE LOST 



Sad resolution and secure. Let each 
His adamantine coat gird well, and each 
Fit well his helm, gripe fast his orbed shield, 
Borne even or high; for this day will pour 

down, 
If I conjecture aught, no drizzling shower, 
But rattling storm of arrows barbed with 

fire.' 
" So warned he them, aware themselves, 

and soon 
In order, quit of all impediment. 548 

Instant, without disturb, they took alarm, 
And onward move embattled: when, behold, 
Not distant far, with heavy pace the Foe 
Approaching gross and huge, in hollow cube 
Training his devilish enginry, impaled 
On every side with shadowing squadrons 

deep, 
To hide the fraud. At interview both 

stood 
A while ; but suddenly at head appeared 
Satan, and thus was heard commanding 

loud: — 
" ' Vanguard, to right and left the front 

unfold, 558 

That all may see who hate us how we seek 
Peace and composure, and with open breast 
Stand ready to receive them, if they like 
Our overture, and turn not back perverse: 
But that I doubt. However, witness 

Heaven ! 
Heaven, witness thou anon ! while we dis- 
charge 
Freely our part. Ye, who appointed stand, 
Do as you have in charge, and briefly touch 
What we propound, and loud that all may 

hear.' 
" So scoffing in ambiguous words, he 

scarce 
Had ended, when to right and left the 

front 
Divided, and to either flank retired; 570 
Which to our eyes discovered, new and 

strange, 
A triple mounted row of pillars laid 
On wheels (for like to pillars most they 

seemed, 
Or hollowed bodies made of oak or fir, 
With branches lopt, in wood or mountain 

felled), 
Brass, iron, stony mould, had not their 

mouths 
With hideous orifice gaped on us wide, 
Portending hollow truce. At each, behind, 
A Seraph stood, and in his hand a reed 



Stood waving tipt with fire; while we, sus- 
pense, 580 
Collected stood within our thoughts amused. 
Not long ! for sudden all at once their reeds 
Put forth, and to a narrow vent applied 
With nicest touch. Immediate in a flame, 
But soon obscured with smoke, all Heaven 

appeared, 
From those deep-throated engines belched, 

whose roar 
Embowelled with outrageous noise the air, 
And all her entrails tore, disgorging foul 
Their devilish glut, chained thunderbolts 
and hail 589 

Of iron globes; which, on the Victor Host 
Levelled, with such impetuous fury smote, 
That whom they hit none on their feet 

might stand, 
Though standing else as rocks, but down 

they fell 
By thousands, Angel on Archangel rowled, 
The sooner for their arms. Unarmed, they 

might 
Have easily, as Spirits, evaded swift 
By quick contraction or remove ; but now 
Foul dissipation followed, and forced rout; 
Nor served it to relax their serried files. 
What should they do ? If on they rushed, 
repulse 600 

Repeated, and indecent overthrow 
Doubled, would render them yet more de- 
spised, 
And to their foes a laughter — for in view 
Stood ranked of Seraphim another row, 
In posture to displode their second tire 
Of thunder; back defeated to return 
They worse abhorred. Satan beheld their 

plight, 
And to his mates thus in derision called: — 
" ' O friends, why come not on these vic- 
tors proud ? 
Erewhile they fierce were coming; and, 
when we, 610 

To entertain them fair with open front 
And breast (what could we more ?), pro- 
pounded terms 
Of composition, straight they changed their 

minds, 
Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell, 
As they would dance. Yet for a dance 

they seemed 
Somewhat extravagant and wild; perhaps 
For joy of offered peace. But I suppose, 
If our proposals once again were heard, 
We should compel them to a quick result.' 



BOOK SIXTH 



73 



" To whom thus Belial, in like game- 
some mood : — 620 

* Leader, the terms we sent were terms of 
weight, 

Of hard contents, and full of force urged 
home, 

Such as we might perceive amused them 
all, 

And stumbled many. Who receives them 
right 

Had need from head to foot well under- 
stand ; 

Not understood, this gift they have be- 
sides — 

They shew us when our foes walk not up- 
right.' 
" So they among themselves in pleasant 
vein 

Stood scoffing, highthened in their thoughts 
beyond 

All doubt of victory ; Eternal Might 630 

To match with their inventions they pre- 
sumed 

So easy, and of his thunder made a scorn, 

And all his host derided, while they stood 

A while in trouble. But they stood not 
long; 

Rage prompted them at length, and found 
them arms 

Against such hellish mischief fit to oppose. 

Forthwith (behold the excellence, the 
power, 

Which God hath in his mighty Angels 
placed !) 

Their arms away they threw, and to the 
hills 639 

(For Earth hath this variety from Heaven 

Of pleasure situate in hill and dale) 

Light as the lightning-glimpse they ran, 
they flew; 

From their foundations, loosening to and 
fro, 

They plucked the seated hills, with all 
their load, 

Rocks, waters, woods, and, by the shaggy 
tops 

Uplifting, bore them in their hands. Amaze, 

Be sure, and terror, seized the rebel Host, 

When coming towards them so dread they 
saw 

The bottom of the mountains upward 
turned, 

Till on those cursed engines' triple row 650 

They saw them whelmed, and all their 
confidence 



Under the weight of mountains buried 

deep; 
Themselves invaded next, and on their 

heads 
Main promontories flung, which in the air 
Came shadowing, and oppressed whole le- 
gions armed. 
Their armour helped their harm, crushed 

in and bruised, 
Into their substance pent — which wrought 

them pain 
Implacable, and many a dolorous groan, 
Long struggling underneath, ere they could 

wind 
Out of such prison, though Spirits of pur- 
est light, 660 
Purest at first, now gross by sinning grown. 
The rest, in imitation, to like arms 
Betook them, and the neighbouring hills 

uptore ; 
So hills amid the air encountered hills, 
Hurled to and fro with jaculation dire, 
That underground they fought in dismal 

shade : 
Infernal noise ! war seemed a civil game 
To this uproar; horrid confusion heaped 
Upon confusion rose. And now all Heaven 
Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspread, 
Had not the Almighty Father, where he 
sits 67 1 

Shrined in his sanctuary of Heaven secure, 
Consulting on the sum of things, foreseen 
This tumult, and permitted all, advised, 
That his great purpose he might so fulfil, 
To honour his Anointed Son, avenged 
Upon his enemies, and to declare 
All power on him transferred. Whence 

to his Son, 
The assessor of his throne, he thus be- 
gan : — 
" ' Effulgence of my glory, Son beloved, 
Son in whose face invisible is beheld 681 
Visibly, what by Deity I am, 
And in whose hand what by decree I do, 
Second Omnipotence ! two days are passed, 
Two days, as we compute the days of Hea- 
ven, 
Since Michael and his Powers went forth 

to tame 
These disobedient. Sore hath been their 

fight, 
As likeliest was when two such foes met 

armed: 
For to themselves I left them; and thou 
know'st 



*74 



PARADISE LOST 



Equal in their creation they were 

formed, 690 

Save what sin hath impaired — which yet 

hath wrought 
Insensibly, for I suspend their doom: 
Whence in perpetual fight they needs must 

last 
Endless, and no solution will be found. 
War wearied hath performed what war can 

do, 
And to disordered rage let loose the reins, 
With mountains, as with weapons, armed; 

which makes 
Wild work in Heaven, and dangerous to 

the main. 
Two days are, therefore, passed; the third 

is thine: 
For thee I have ordained it, and thus far 700 
Have suffered, that the glory may be thine 
Of ending this great war, since none but 

thou 
Can end it. Into thee such virtue and 

grace 
Immense I have transfused, that all may 

know 
In Heaven and Hell thy power above com- 
pare, 
And this perverse commotion governed 

thus, 
To manifest thee worthiest to be Heir 
Of all things — to be Heir, and to be 

King 
By sacred unction, thy deserved right. 
Go, then, thou Mightiest, in thy Father's 

might; 710 

Ascend my chariot; guide the rapid wheels 
That shake Heaven's basis; bring forth all 

my war; 
My bow and thunder, my almighty arms, 
Gird on, and sword upon thy puissant 

thigh; 
Pursue these Sons of Darkness, drive them 

out 
From all Heaven's bounds into the utter 

Deep; 
There let them learn, as likes them, to 

despise 
God, and Messiah his anointed King.' 

" He said, and on his Son with rays di- 
rect 
Shon full. He all his Father full ex- 
pressed 720 
Ineffably into his face received; 
And thus the Filial Godhead answering 

spake: — 



"*0 Father, O Supreme of Heavenly 

Thrones, 
First, Highest, Holiest, Best, thou always 

seek'st 
To glorify thy Son; I always thee, 
As is most just. This I my glory account, 
My exaltation, and my whole delight, 
That thou in me, well pleased, declar'st thy 

will 
Fulfilled, which to fulfil is all my bliss. 
Sceptre and power, thy giving, I assume, 730 
And gladlier shall resign when in the end 
Thou shalt be all in all, and I in thee 
For ever, and in me all whom thou lov'st. 
But whom thou hat'st I hate, and can put 

on 
Thy terrors, as I put thy mildness on, 
Image of thee in all things : and shall soon, 
Armed with thy might, rid Heaven of 

these rebelled, 
To their prepared ill mansion driven down, 
To chains of darkness and the undying 

Worm, 
That from thy just obedience could re- 
volt, 740 
Whom to obey is happiness entire. 
Then shall thy Saints, unmixed, and from 

the impure 
Far separate, circling thy holy Mount, 
Unfeigned halleluiahs to thee sing, 
Hymns of high praise, and I among them 

chief.' 
"So said, He, o'er his sceptre bowing, 

rose 
From the right hand of Glory where He 

sat; 
And the third sacred morn began to shine, 
Dawning through Heaven. Forth rushed 

with whirlwind sound 
The chariot of Paternal Deity, 750 

Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel; 

undrawn, 
Itself instinct with spirit, but convoyed 
By four cherubic Shapes. Four faces each 
Had wondrous; as with stars, their bodies 

all 
And wings were set with eyes; with eyes 

the wheels 
Of beryl, and careering fires between; 
Over their heads a crystal firmament, 
Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with 

pure 
Amber and colours of the showery arch. 
He, in celestial panoply all armed 760 

Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought, 



BOOK SIXTH 



175 



Ascended; at his right hand Victory 

Sat eagle-winged ; beside him hung his 

bow, 
And quiver, with three - bolted thunder 

stored ; 
And from about him fierce effusion rowled 
Of smoke and bickering flame and sparkles 

dire. 
Attended with ten thousand thousand 

Saints, 
He onward came ; far off his coming shon ; 
And twenty thousand (I their number 

heard) 
Chariots of God, half on each hand, were 
seen. 770 

He on the wings of Cherub rode sublime 
On the crystallin sky, in saphir throned — 
Illustrious far and wide, but by his own 
First seen. Them unexpected joy sur- 
prised 
When the great ensign of Messiah blazed 
Aloft, by Angels borne, his Sign in Heaven ; 
Under whose conduct Michael soon reduced 
His army, circumfused on either wing, 
Under their Head embodied all in one. 
Before him Power Divine his way pre- 
pared ; 780 
At his command the uprooted hills retired 
Each to his place; they heard his voice, and 
went 
mious; Heaven his wonted face re- 
newed, 

And with fresh flowerets hill and valley 
smiled. 
" This saw his hapless foes, but stood 
obdured, 
And to rebellious fight rallied their Powers, 
Insensate, hope conceiving from despair. 
In Heavenly Spirits could such perverse- 

ness dwell ? 
But to convince the proud what signs avail, 
Or wonders move the obdurate to relent ? 790 
They, hardened more by what might most 

reclaim, 
Grieving to see his glory, at the sight 
Took envy, and, aspiring to his highth, 
Stood re-imbattled fierce, by force or fraud 
Weening to prosper, and at length prevail 
Against God and Messiah, or to fall 
In universal ruin last; and now 
To final battle drew, disdaining flight, 
Or faint retreat: when the great Son of 

God 
To all his host on either hand thus 
spake : — 800 



" ' Stand still in bright array, ye Saints ; 
here stand, 
Ye Angels armed ; this day from battle rest. 
Faithful hath been your warfare, and of 

God 
Accepted, fearless in his righteous cause; 
And, as ye have received, so have ye done, 
Invincibly. But of this cursed crew 
The punishment to other hand belongs; 
Vengeance is his, or whose He sole ap- 
points. 
Number to this day's work is not ordained, 
Nor multitude; stand only and behold 810 
God's indignation on these godless poured 
By me. Not you, but me, they have de- 
spised, 
Yet envied ; against me is all their rage, 
Because the Father, to whom in Heaven 

supreme 
Kingdom and power and glory appertains, 
Hath honoured me, according to his will. 
Therefore to me their doom he hath as- 
signed, 
That they may have their wish, to try with 

me 
In battle which the stronger proves — they 

all, 
Or I alone against them; since by 
strength 820 

They measure all, of other excellence 
Not emulous, nor care who them excels; 
Nor other strife with them do I voutsafe.' 
" So spake the Son, and into terror 
changed 
His countenance, too severe to be beheld, 
And full of wrauth bent on his enemies. 
At once the Four spread out their starry 

wings 
With dreadful shade contiguous, and the 

orbs 
Of his fierce chariot rowled, as with the 

sound 
Of torrent floods, or of a numerous host. 830 
He on his impious foes right onward drove, 
Gloomy as Night. Under his burning wheels 
The steadfast Empyrean shook throughout, 
All but the Throne itself of God. Full soon 
Among them he arrived, in his right hand 
Grasping ten thousand thunders, which he 

sent 
Before him, such as in their souls infixed 
Plagues. They, astonished, all resistance 

lost, 
All courage; down their idle weapons 
dropt; 



176 



PARADISE LOST 



O'er shields, and helms, and helmed heads 
he rode 840 

Of Thrones and mighty Seraphim prostrate', 

That wished the mountains now might be 
again 

Thrown on them, as a shelter from his ire. 

Nor less on either side tempestuous fell 

His arrows, from the fourfold-visaged Four, 

Distinct with eyes, and from the living 
wheels, 

Distinct alike with multitude of eyes; 

One spirit in them ruled, and every eye 

Glared lightning, and shot forth pernicious 
fire 

Among the accursed, that withered all 
their strength, 850 

And of their wonted vigour left them 
drained, 

Exhausted, spiritless, afflicted, fallen, 

Yet half his strength he put not forth, but 
checked 

His thunder in mid-volley; for he meant 

Not to destroy, but root them out of Hea- 
ven. 

The overthrown he raised, and, as a herd 

Of goats or timorous flock together thronged, 

Drove them before him thunderstruck, pur- 
sued 

With terrors and with furies to the bounds 

And crystal wall of Heaven; which, open- 
ing wide, 860 

Howled inward, and a spacious gap dis- 
closed 

Into the wasteful Deep. The monstrous 
sight 

Strook them with horror backward ; but far 
worse 

Urged them behind: headlong themselves 
they threw 

Down from the verge of Heaven: eternal 
wrauth 

Burnt after them to the bottomless pit. 
"Hell heard the unsufferable noise; Hell 
saw 

Heaven ruining from Heaven, and would 
have fled 

Affrighted; but strict Fate had cast too 
deep 

Her dark foundations, and too fast had 
bound. 870 

Nine days they fell; confounded Chaos 
roared, 

And felt tenfold confusion in their fall 

Through his wild Anarchy; so huge a rout 

Incumbered him with ruin. Hell at last, 



Yawning, received them whole, and on 

them closed — 
Hell, their fit habitation, fraught with fire 
Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain. 
Disburdened Heaven rejoiced, and soon re- 
paired 
Her mural breach, returning whence it 

rowled. 
Sole victor, from the expulsion of his foes 
Messiah his triumphal chariot turned. 881 
To meet him all his Saints, who silent stood 
Eye-witnesses of his almighty acts, 
With jubilee advanced; and, as they went, 
Shaded with branching palm, each order 

bright 
Sung triumph, and him sung victorious 

King, 
Son, Heir, and Lord, to him dominion 

given, 
Worthiest to reign. He celebrated rode, 
Triumphant through mid Heaven, into the 

courts 
And temple of his mighty Father throned 
On high; who into glory him received, 891 
Where now he sits at the right hand of 
bliss. 
" Thus, measuring things in Heaven by 
things on Earth, 
At thy request, and that thou may'st be- 
ware 
By what is past, to thee I have revealed 
What might have else to human race been 

hid — 
The discord which befell, and war in Hea- 
ven 
Among the Angelic Powers, and the deep 

fall 
Of those too high aspiring who rebelled 899 
With Satan: he who envies now thy state, 
Who now is plotting how he may seduce 
Thee also from obedience, that, with him 
Bereaved of happiness, thou may'st par- 
take 
His punishment, eternal misery; 
Which would be all his solace and revenge, 
As a despite done against the Most High, 
Thee once to gain companion of his woe. 
But listen not to his temptations; warn 
Thy weaker; let it profit thee to have 

heard, 
By terrible example, the reward 910 

Of disobedience. Firm they might have 

stood, 
Yet fell. Remember, and fear to trans- 
gress." 



BOOK SEVENTH 



77 



BOOK VII 

THE ARGUMENT 

Raphael, at the request of Adam, relates how and 
wherefore this World was first created : — that God, 
after the expelling of Satan and his Angels out of Hea- 
ven, declared his pleasure to create another World, and 
other creatures to dwell therein ; sends his Son with 
glory, and attendance of Angels, to perform the work 
of creation in six days : the Angels celebrate with hymns 
the performance thereof, and his reascension into Hea- 
ven. 

Descend from Heaven, Urania, by that 
name 

If rightly thou art called, whose voice di- 
vine 

Following, above the Olympian hill I soar, 

Above the flight of Pegasean wing ! 

The meaning, not the name, I call; for 
thou 

Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top 

Of old Olympus dwell'st; but, heavenly- 
born, 

Before the hills appeared or fountain 
flowed, 

Thou with Eternal Wisdom didst converse, 

Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst 
play IO 

In presence of the Almighty Father, 
pleased 

With thy celestial song. Up led by thee, 

Into the Heaven of Heavens I have pre- 
sumed, 

An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air, 

Thy tempering. With like safety guided 
down, 

Return me to my native element; 

Lest, from this flying steed unreined (as 
once 

Bellerophon, though from a lower clime) 

Dismounted, on the Aleian field I fall, 

Erroneous there to wander and forlorn. 20 

Half yet remains unsung, but narrower 
bound 

Within the visible Diurnal Sphere. 

Standing on Earth, not rapt above the 
pole, 

More safe I sing with mortal voice, un- 
changed 

To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil 
days, 

On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues, 

In darkness, and with dangers compassed 
round, 

And solitude; yet not alone, while thou 



Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when 

Morn 
Purples the East. Still govern thou my 
song, 30 

Urania, and fit audience find, though few. 
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance 
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race 
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian 

Bard 
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears 
To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned 
Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse 

defend 
Her son. So fail not thou who thee im- 
plores ; 
For thou art heavenly, she an empty 
dream. 
Say, Goddess, what ensued when Ra- 
phael, 40 
The affable Archangel, had forewarned 
Adam, by dire example, to beware 
Apostasy, by what befell in Heaven 
To those apostates, lest the like befall 
In Paradise to Adam or his race, 
Charged not to touch the interdicted Tree, 
If they transgress, and slight that sole 

command, 
So easily obeyed amid the choice 
Of all tastes else to please their appetite, 
Though wandering. He, with his con- 
sorted Eve, 50 
The story heard attentive, and was filled 
With admiration and deep muse, to hear 
Of things so high and strange — things to 

their thought 
So unimaginable as hate in Heaven, 
And war so near the peace of God in bliss. 
With such confusion; but the evil, soon 
Driven back, redounded as a flood on those 
From whom it sprung, impossible to mix 
With blessedness. Whence Adam soon re- 
pealed 
The doubts that in his heart arose; and, 
now 60 

Led on, yet sinless, with desire to know 
What nearer might concern him — how this 

World 
Of heaven and earth conspicuous first be- 
gan; 
When, and whereof, created; for what 

cause ; 
What within Eden, or without, was done 
Before his memory — as one whose drouth, 
Yet scarce allayed, still eyes the current 
stream, 



178 



PARADISE LOST 



Whose liquid murmur heard new thirst ex- 
cites, 
Proceeded thus to ask his Heavenly 
Guest: — 
" Great things, and full of wonder in our 
ears, 70 

Far differing from this World, thou hast 

revealed, 
Divine Interpreter ! by favour sent 
Down from the Empyrean to forewarn 
Us timely of what might else have been 

our loss, 
Unknown, which human knowledge could 

not reach; 
For which to the infinitely Good we owe 
Immortal thanks, and his admonishment 
Receive with solemn purpose to observe 
Immutably his sovran will, the end 
Of what we are. But, since thou hast 
voutsafed 80 

Gently, for our instruction, to impart 
Things above Earthly thought, which yet 

concerned 
Our knowing, as to highest Wisdom seemed, 
Deign to descend now lower, and relate 
What may no less perhaps avail us known — 
How first began this Heaven which we be- 
hold 
Distant so high, with moving fires adorned 
Innumerable; and this which yields or fills 
All space, the ambient Air, wide inter- 
fused, 
Imbracing round this florid Earth; what 
cause 90 

Moved the Creator, in his holy rest 
Through all eternity, so late to build 
In Chaos; and, the work begun, how soon 
Absolved: if unforbid thou may'st unfold 
What we not to explore the secrets ask 
Of his eternal empire, but the more 
To magnify his works the more we know. 
And the great Light of Day yet wants to 

run 
Much of his race, though steep. Suspense 

in heaven 
Held by thy voice, thy potent voice he 
hears, 100 

And longer will delay, to hear thee tell 
His generation, and the rising birth 
Of Nature from the unapparent Deep: 
Or, if the Star of Evening and the Moon 
Haste to thy audience, Night with her will 

bring 
Silence, and Sleep listening to thee will 
watch; 



Or we can bid his absence till thy song 
End, and dismiss thee ere the morning 
shine." 
Thus Adam his illustrious guest be- 
sought; 
And thus the godlike Angel answered 
mild: — no 

" This also thy request, with caution 
asked, 
Obtain; though to recount almighty works 
What words or tongue of Seraph can 

suffice, 
Or heart of man suffice to comprehend ? 
Yet what thou canst attain, which best may 

serve 
To glorify the Maker, and infer 
Thee also happier, shall not be withheld 
Thy hearing. Such commission from above 
I have received, to answer thy desire 
Of knowledge within bounds; beyond ab- 
stain 120 
To ask, nor let thine own inventions hope 
Things not revealed, which the invisible 

King, 
Only Omniscient, hath suppressed in night, 
To none communicable in Earth or Heaven. 
Enough is left besides to search and know; 
But Knowledge is as food, and needs no 

less 
Her temperance over appetite, to know 
In measure what the mind may well con- 
tain; 
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns 
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind. 130 
" Know then that, after Lucifer from 
Heaven 
(So call him, brighter once amidst the host 
Of Angels than that star the stars among) 
Fell with his flaming Legions through the 

Deep 
Into his place, and the great Son returned 
Victorious with his Saints, the Omnipotent 
Eternal Father from his Throne beheld 
Their multitude, and to his Son thus 
spake : — 
" * At least our envious foe hath failed, 
who thought 
All like himself rebellious ; by whose aid 140 
This inaccessible high strength, the seat 
Of Deity supreme, us dispossessed, 
He trusted to have seized, and into fraud 
Drew many whom their place knows here 

no more. 
Yet far the greater part have kept, I see, 
Their station ; Heaven, yet populous, retains 



BOOK SEVENTH 



179 



Number sufficient to possess her realms, 
Though wide, and this high temple to fre- 
quent 
With ministeries due and solemn rites. 
But, lest his heart exalt him in the harm 150 
Already done, to have dispeopled Heaven — 
My damage fondly deemed — I can repair 
That detriment, if such it be to lose 
Self-lost, and in a moment will create 
Another world ; out of one man a race 
Of men innumerable, there to dwell, 
Not here, till, by degrees of merit raised, 
They open to themselves at length the way 
Up hither, under long obedience tried, 
And Earth be changed to Heaven, and 
Heaven to Earth, 160 

One kingdom, joy and union without end. 
Meanwhile inhabit lax, ye Powers of 

Heaven ; 
And thou, my Word, begotten Son, by thee 
This I perform ; speak thou, and be it done ! 
My overshadowing Spirit and might with 

thee 
I send along; ride forth, and bid the Deep 
Within appointed bounds be heaven and 

earth. 

Boundless the Deep, because I am who fill 
Infinitude ; nor vacuous the space, 
Though I, uncircumscribed, myself re- 
tire, 170 
And put not forth my goodness, which is 

free 
To act or not. Necessity and Chance 
Approach not me, and what I will is Fate.' 
"So spake the Almighty; and to what 

»he spake 
His Word, the Filial Godhead, gave effect. 
Immediate are the acts of God, more swift 
Than time or motion, but to human ears 

I Cannot without process' of speech be told, 
So told as earthly notion can receive. 179 
Great triumph and rejoicing was in Heaven 
When such was heard declared the Al- 
mighty's will. 
Glory they sung to the Most High, good- 
will 
To future men, and in their dwellings 
peace — 
Glory to Him whose just avenging ire 
Had driven out the ungodly from his sight 
And the habitations of the just; to Him 
Glory and praise whose wisdom had or- 
dained 
Good out of evil to create — instead 
Of Spirits malign, a better Race to bring 



Into their vacant room, and thence diffuse 
His good to worlds and ages infinite. 191 
" So sang the Hierarchies. Meanwhile 

the Son 
On his great expedition now appeared, 
Girt with omnipotence, with radiance 

crowned 
Of majesty divine, sapience and love 
Immense; and all his Father in him shon. 
About his chariot numberless were poured 
Cherub and Seraph, Potentates and Thrones, 
And Virtues, winged Spirits, and chariots 

winged 
From the armoury of God, where stand of 

old 200 

Myriads, between two brazen mountains 

lodged 
Against a solemn day, harnessed at hand, 
Celestial equipage; and now came forth 
Spontaneous, for within them Spirit lived, 
Attendant on their Lord. Heaven opened 

wide 
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound 
On golden hinges moving, to let forth 
The King of Glory, in his powerful Word 
And Spirit coming to create new worlds. 
On Heavenly ground they stood, and from 

the shore 210 

They viewed the vast immeasurable Abyss, 
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild, 
Up from the bottom turned by furious 

winds 
And surging waves, as mountains to as- 
sault 
Heaven's highth, and with the centre mix 

the pole. 
" ' Silence, ye troubled waves, and, thou 

Deep, peace ! ' 
Said then the omnific Word : ' your discord 

end ! ' 
Nor stayed ; but, on the wings of Cherubim 
Uplifted, in paternal glory rode 
Far into Chaos and the World unborn ; 220 
For Chaos heard his voice. Him all his 

train 
Followed in bright procession, to behold 
Creation, and the wonders of his might. 
Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in his 

hand 
He took the golden compasses, prepared 
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe 
This Universe, and all created things. 
One foot he centred, and the other turned 
Round through the vast profundity ob- 
scure, 



PARADISE LOST 



And said, ' Thus far extend, thus far thy 

bounds; 230 

This be thy just circumference, O World ! ' 

Thus God the Heaven created, thus the 

Earth, 
Matter unformed and void. Darkness pro- 
found 
Covered the Abyss; but on the watery calm 
His brooding wings the Spirit of God out- 
spread, 
And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth, 
Throughout the fluid mass, but downward 

purged 
The black, tartareous, cold, infernal dregs, 
Adverse to life; then founded, then con- 
globed, 239 
Like things to like, the rest to several place 
Disparted, and between spun out the Air, 
And Earth, self-balanced, on her centre 
hung. 
" ' Let there be Light ! ' said God ; and 
forthwith Light 
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure, 
Sprung from the Deep, and from her na- 
tive East 
To journey through the aery gloom began, 
Sphered in a radiant cloud — for yet the 

Sun 
Was not; she in a cloudy tabernacle 
Sojourned the while. God saw the Light 
was good; 249 

And light from darkness by the hemisphere 
Divided: Light the Day, and Darkness 

Night, 
He named. Thus was the first Day even 

and morn; 
Nor passed uncelebrated, nor unsung 
By the celestial quires, when orient light 
Exhaling first from darkness they beheld, 
Birth-day of Heaven and Earth. With joy 

and shout 
The hollow universal orb they filled, 
And touched their golden harps, and hym- 
ning praised 
God and his works; Creator him they sung, 
Both when first evening was, and when first 
morn. 260 

" Again God said, ' Let there be firma- 
ment 
Amid the waters, and let it divide 
The waters from the waters ! ' And God 

made 
The firmament, expanse of liquid, pure, 
Transparent, elemental air, diffused 
In circuit to the uttermost convex 



Of this great round — partition firm and 

sure, 
The waters underneath from those above 
Dividing; for as Earth, so he the World 
Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide 
Crystallin ocean, and the loud misrule 271 
Of Chaos far removed, lest fierce extremes 
Contiguous might distemper the whole 

frame : 
And Heaven he named the Firmament. 

So even 
And morning chorus sung the second Day. 
"The Earth was formed, but, in the 

womb as yet 
Of waters, embryon immature, involved, 
Appeared not; over all the face of Earth 
Main ocean flowed, not idle, but, with warm 
Prolific humour softening all her globe, 280 
Fermented the great mother to conceive, 
Satiate with genial moisture; when God 

said, 
' Be gathered now, ye waters under heaven, 
Into one place, and let dry land appear ! ' 
Immediately the mountains huge appear 
Emergent, and their broad bare backs up- 
heave 
Into the clouds; their tops ascend the sky. 
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low 
Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and 

deep, 
Capacious bed of waters. Thither they 290 
Hasted with glad precipitance, uprowled, 
As drops on dust conglobing, from the dry: 
Part rise in crystal wall, or ridge direct, 
For haste; such flight the great command 

impressed 
On the swift floods. As armies at the call 
Of trumpet (for of armies thou hast heard) 
Troop to their standard, so the watery 

throng, 
Wave rowling after wave, where way they 

found — 
If steep, with torrent rapture, if through 

plain, 
Soft-ebbing; nor withstood them rock or 

hill; 300 

But they, or underground, or circuit wide 
With serpent error wandering, found their 

way, 
And on the washy ooze deep channels wore: 
Easy, ere God had bid the ground be dry, 
All but within those banks where rivers now 
Stream, and perpetual draw their humid 

train. 
The dryland Earth, and the great receptacle 



BOOK SEVENTH 



181 



Of congregated waters he called Seas; 
And saw that it was good, and said, ' Let 

the Earth 
Put forth the verdant grass, herb yielding 

seed, 310 

And fruit-tree yielding fruit after her kind, 
Whose seed is in herself upon the Earth ! ' 
He scarce had said when the bare Earth, 

till then 

Desert and bare, unsightly, unadorned, 
Brought forth the tender grass, whose ver- 
dure clad 

Her universal face with pleasant green; 
Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden 

flowered, 
Opening their various colours, and made gay 
Her bosom, smelling sweet; and, these 

scarce blown, 
Forth flourished thick the clustering vine, 

forth crept 320 

The smelling gourd, up stood the corny reed 
Imbattled in her field: add the humble 

shrub, 
And bush with frizzled hair implicit: last 
Rose, as in dance, the stately trees, and 

spread 
Their branches hung with copious fruit, or 

gemmed 
Their blossoms. With high woods the hills 

were crowned, 
With tufts the valleys and each fountain- 
side, 
With borders long the rivers, that Earth 

now 
Seemed like to Heaven, a seat where gods 

might dwell, 
Or wander with delight, and love to 

haunt 330 

Her sacred shades; though God had yet 

not rained 
Upon the Earth, and man to till the ground 
None was, but from the Earth a dewy 

mist 
Went up and watered all the ground, and 

each 
Plant of the field, which ere it was in the 

Earth 
God made, and every herb before it grew 
On the green stem. God saw that it was 

good; 
So even and morn recorded the third Day. 
" Again the Almighty spake, ' Let there 

be Lights 
High in the expanse of Heaven, to di- 
vide 340 



The Day from Night; and let them be for 

signs, 
For seasons, and for days, and circling 

years ; 
And let them be for lights, as I ordain 
Their office in the firmament of heaven, 
To give light on the Earth ! ' and it was so. 
And God made two great Lights, great for 

their use 
To Man, the greater to have rule by day, 
The less by night, alterne; and made the 

Stars, 
And set them in the firmament of heaven 
To illuminate the Earth, and rule the 

day 350 

In their vicissitude, and rule the night, 
And light from darkness to divide. God 

saw, 
Surveying his great work, that it was good: 
For, of celestial bodies, first the Sun 
A mighty sphere he framed, unlightsome 

first, 
Though of ethereal mould; then formed 

the Moon 
Globose, and every magnitude of Stars, 
And sowed with stars the heaven thick as a 

field. 
Of light by far the greater part he took, 
Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and 

placed 360 

In the Sun's orb, made porous to receive 
And drink the liquid light, firm to retain 
Her gathered beams, great palace now of 

Light. 
Hither, as to their fountain, other stars 
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light, 
And hence the morning planet gilds her 

horns ; 
By tincture or reflection they augment 
Their small peculiar, though, from human 

sight 
So far remote, with diminution seen. 
First in his east the glorious lamp was 

seen, 370 

Regent of day, and all the horizon round 
Invested with bright rays, jocond to run 
His longitude through heaven's high-road; 

the grey 
Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced, 
Shedding sweet influence. Less bright the 

Moon, 
But opposite in levelled west, was set, 
His mirror, with full face borrowing her 

light 
From him ; for other light she needed none 



182 



PARADISE LOST 



In that aspect, and still that distance keeps 
Till night; then in the east her turn she 

shines, 380 

Revolved on heaven's great axle, and her 

reign 
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds, 
With thousand thousand stars, that then 

appeared 
Spangling the hemisphere. Then first 

adorned 
With her bright luminaries, that set and 

rose, 
Glad evening and glad morn crowned the 

fourth Day. 
" And God said, ' Let the waters gener- 
ate 
Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul; 
And let Fowl fly above the earth, with 

wings 
Displayed on the open firmament of 

heaven ! ' 390 

And God created the great Whales, and 

each 
Soul living, each that crept, which plente- 

ously 
The waters generated by their kinds, 
And every bird of wing after his kind, 
And saw that it was good, and blessed 

them, saying, 
' Be fruitful, multiply, and, in the seas, 
And lakes, and running streams, the waters 

fill; 
And let the fowl be multiplied on the 

earth ! ' 
Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek 

and bay, 399 

With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals 
Of fish that, with their fins and shining 

scales, 
Glide under the green wave in sculls that 

oft 
Bank the mid-sea. Part, single or with 

mate, 
Graze the sea-weed, their pasture, and 

through groves 
Of coral stray, or, sporting with quick 

glance, 
Shew to the sun their waved coats dropt 

with gold, 
Or, in their pearly shells at ease, attend 
Moist nutriment, or under rocks their food 
In jointed armour watch; on smooth the 

seal 
And bended dolphins play : part, huge of 

bulk, 410 



Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their 

gait, 
Tempest the ocean. There Leviathan, 
Hugest of living creatures, on the deep 
Stretched like a promontory, sleeps or 

swims, 
And seems a moving land, and at his gills 
Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out, a sea. 
Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fens, and 

shores, 
Their brood as numerous hatch from the 

egg, that soon, 
Bursting with kindly rupture, forth dis- 
closed 
Their callow young; but feathered soon 

and fledge 420 

They summed their pens, and, soaring the 

air sublime, 
With clang despised the ground, under a 

cloud 
In prospect. There the eagle and the stork 
On cliffs and cedar-tops their eyries build. 
Part loosely wing the Region; part, more 

wise, 
In common, ranged in figure, wedge their 

way, 
Intelligent of seasons, and set forth 
Their aerie caravan, high over seas 
Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing 
Easing their flight: so steers the prudent 

crane 430 

Her annual voyage, borne on winds : the air 
Floats as they pass, fanned with unnum- 
bered plumes. 
From branch to branch the smaller birds 

with song 
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted 

wings, 
Till even; nor then the solemn nightingal 
Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her 

soft lays. 
Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed 
Their downy breast; the swan, with arched 

neck 
Between her white wings mantling proudly, 

rows 439 

Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit 
The dank, and, rising on stiff pennons, 

tower 
The mid aerial sky. Others on ground 
Walked firm — the crested cock, whose 

clarion sounds 
The silent hours, and the other, whose gay 

train 
Adorns him, coloured with the florid hue 



BOOK SEVENTH 



183 



Of rainbows and starry eyes. The waters 
thus 

With Fish replenished, and the air with 
Fowl, 

Eveuing and morn solemnized the fifth 
Day. 
" The sixth, and of Creation last, arose 

With evening harps and matin ; when God 
said, 450 

1 Let the Earth bring forth soul living in 
her kind, 

Cattle, and creeping things, and beast of 
the earth, 

Each in their kind ! ' The Earth obeyed, 
and, straight 

Opening her fertil womb, teemed at a birth 

Innumerous living creatures, perfet forms, 

Limbed and full-grown. Out of the ground 
up rose, 

As from his lair, the wild beast, where he 
wons 

In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den — 

Among the trees in pairs they rose, they 
walked; 459 

The cattle in the fields and meadows green : 

Those rare and solitary, these in flocks 

Pasturing at once and in broad herds, up- 
sprung. 

The grassy clods now calved; now half ap- 
peared 

The tawny Lion, pawing to get free 

His hinder parts — then springs, as broke 
from bonds, 

And rampant shakes his brinded mane; 
the Ounce, 

The Libbard, and the Tiger, as the Mole 

Rising, the crumbled earth above them 
threw 

In hillocks; the swift Stag from under- 
ground 4 6 9 

Bore up his branching head; scarce from 
his mould 

Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved 

His vastness; fleeced the flocks and bleat- 
ing rose, 

As plants; ambiguous between sea and 
land, 

The River-horse and scaly Crocodile. 

At once came forth whatever creeps the 
ground, 

Insect or worm. Those waved their limber 
fans 

For wings, and smallest lineaments exact 

In all the liveries decked of summer's 
pride, 



With spots of gold and purple, azure and 

green; 479 

These as a line their long dimension drew, 

Streaking the ground with sinuous trace: 

not all 
Minims of nature; some of serpent kind, 
Wondrous in length and corpulence, in- 
volved 
Their snaky folds, and added wings. First 

crept 
The parsimonious Emmet, provident 
Of future, in small room large heart en- 
closed — 
Pattern of just equality perhaps 
Hereafter — joined in her popular tribes 
Of commonalty. Swarming next appeared 
The female Bee, that feeds her husband 
drone 490 

Deliciously, and builds her waxen cells 
With honey stored. The rest are number- 
less, 
And thou their natures know'st, and gav'st 

them names, 
Needless to thee repeated; nor unknown 
The Serpent, subtlest beast of all the field, 
Of huge extent sometimes, with brazen 

eyes 
And hairy mane terrific, though to thee 
Not noxious, but obedient at thy call. 
" Now Heaven in all her glory shon, 
and rowled 
Her motions, as the great First Mover's 
hand 500 

First wheeled their course; Earth, in her 

rich attire 
Consummate, lovely smiled; Air, Water, 

Earth, 
By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, 

was walked, 
Frequent; and of the sixth Day yet re- 
mained. 
There wanted yet the master-work, the 

end 
Of all yet done — a creature who, not 

prone 
And brute as other creatures, but endued 
With sanctity of reason, might erect 
His stature, and, upright with front serene 
Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from 
thence 5 10 

Magnanimous to correspond with Heaven, 
But grateful to acknowledge whence his 

good 
Descends; thither with heart, and voice, 
and eyes 



:8 4 



PARADISE LOST 



Directed in devotion, to adore 

And worship God Supreme, who made him 

chief 
Of all his works. Therefore the Omnipo- 
tent 
Eternal Father (for where is not He 
Present ?) thus to his Son audibly spake : — 
' Let us make now Man in our image, Man 
In our similitude, and let them rule 520 
Over the fish and fowl of sea and air, 
Beast of the field, and over all the earth, 
And every creeping thing that creeps the 

ground ! ' 
This said, he formed thee, Adam, thee, O 

Man, 
Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils 

breathed 
The breath of life; in his own image he 
Created thee, in the image of God 
Express, and thou becam'st a living Soul. 
Male he created thee, but thy consort' 
Female, for race; then blessed mankind, 

and said, 530 

* Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the Earth ; 
Subdue it, and throughout dominion hold 
Over fish of the sea, and fowl of the air, 
And every living thing that moves on the 

Earth ! ' 
Wherever thus created — for no place 
Is yet distinct by name — thence, as thou 

know'st, 
He brought thee into this delicious grove, 
This Garden, planted with the trees of 

God, 
Delectable both to behold and taste, 
And freely all their pleasant fruit for food 
Gave thee. All sorts are here that all the 

earth yields, 541 

Variety without end; but of the tree 
Which tasted works knowledge of good 

and evil 
Thou may'st not; in the day thou eat'st, 

thou diest. 
Death is the penalty imposed; beware, 
And govern well thy appetite, lest Sin 
Surprise thee, and her black attendant, 

Death. 
" Here finished He, and all that he had 

made 
Viewed, and, behold ! all was entirely 

good. 
So even and morn accomplished the sixth 

Day; . 550 

Yet not till the Creator, from his work 
Desisting, though unwearied, up returned, 



Up to the Heaven of Heavens, his high 

abode, 
Thence to behold this new-created World, 
The addition of his empire, how it shewed 
In prospect from his Throne, how good, 

how fair, 
Answering his great Idea. Up he rode, 
Followed with acclamation, and the sound 
Symphonious of ten thousand harps, that 

tuned 
Angelic harmonies. The Earth, the Air 
Resounded (thou remember'st, for thou 

heard'st), 561 

The heavens and all the constellations 

rung, 
The planets in their stations listening 

stood, 
While the bright pomp ascended jubilant. 
' Open, ye everlasting gates ! ' they sung; 
' Open, ye Heavens, your living doors ! let 

in 
The great Creator, from his work returned 
Magnificent, his six days' work, a World ! 
Open, and henceforth oft; for God will 

deign 
To visit oft the dwellings of just men 570 
Delighted, and with frequent intercourse 
Thither will send his winged messengers 
On errands of supernal grace.' So sung 
The glorious train ascending. He through 

Heaven, 
That opened wide her blazing portals, led 
To God's eternal house direct the way — 
A broad and ample road, whose dust is 

gold, 
And pavement stars, as stars to thee ap- 
pear 
Seen in the Galaxy, that milky way 
Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest 
Powdered with stars. And now on Earth 

the seventh 581 

Evening arose in Eden — for the sun 
Was set, and twilight from the east came 

on, 
Forerunning night — when at the holy 

mount ' 
Of Heaven's high-seated top, the imperial 

throne 
Of Godhead, fixed for ever firm and sure, 
The Filial Power arrived, and sat him 

down 
With his great Father; for He also went 
Invisible, yet stayed (such privilege 
Hath Omnipresence) and the work or- 
dained, 59° 



BOOK EIGHTH 



185 



Author and end of all things, and, from 

work 
Now resting, blessed and hallowed the 

seventh Day, 
As resting on that day from all his work ; 
But not in silence holy kept: the harp 
Had work, and rested not ; the solemn pipe 
And dulcimer, all organs of sweet stop, 
All sounds on fret by string or golden 

wire, 
Tempered soft tunings, intermixed with 

voice 
Choral or unison; of incense clouds, 
Fuming from golden censers, hid the 

Mount. 600 

Creation and the Six Days' acts they 

sung: — 
' Great are thy works, Jehovah ! infinite 
Thy power ! what thought can measure 

thee, or tongue 
Relate thee — greater now in thy return 
Than from the Giant-angels ? Thee that 

day 
Thy thunders magnified; but to create 
Is greater than created to destroy. 
Who can impair thee, mighty King, or 

bound 
Thy empire ? Easily the proud attempt 
Of Spirits apostat, and their counsels vain, 
Thou hast repelled, while impiously they 

thought 61 1 

Thee to diminish, and from thee withdraw 
The number of thy worshipers. Who seeks 
To lessen thee, against his purpose, serves 
To manifest the more thy might ; his evil 



Thou usest, and from thence creat'st more 

good. 
Witness this new-made World, another 

Heaven 
From Heaven -gate not far, founded in 

view 
On the clear hyalin, the glassy sea; 619 

Of amplitude almost immense, with stars 
Numerous, and every star perhaps a world 
Of destined habitation — but thou know'st 
Their seasons; among these the seat of 

men, 
Earth, with her nether ocean circumfused, 
Their pleasant dwelling - place. Thrice 

happy men, 
And sons of men, whom God hath thus ad- 
vanced, 
Created in his image, there to dwell 
And worship him, and in reward to rule 
Over his works, on earth, in sea, or air, 
And multiply a race of worshipers 630 

Holy and just ! thrice happy, if they know 
Their happiness, and persevere upright ! ' 
" So sung they, and the Empyrean rung 
With halleluiahs. Thus was Sabbath kept. 
And thy request think now fulfilled, that 

asked 
How first this World and face of things 

began, 
And what before thy memory was done 
From the beginning, that posterity, 
Informed by thee, might know. If else 

thou seek'st 
Aught, not surpassing human measure, 

say." 640 



BOOK VIII 



THE ARGUMENT 

Adam inquires concerning celestial motions ; is doubt- 
fully answered, and exhorted to search rather things 
more worthy of knowledge. Adam assents, and, still 
desirous to detain Raphael, relates to him what he re- 
membered since his own creation — his placing in Para- 
dise; his talk with God concerning solitude and fit 
society ; his first meeting and nuptials with Eve. His 
discourse with the Angel thereupon ; who, after admo- 
nitions repeated, departs. 

The Angel ended, and in Adam's ear 
So charming left his voice that he a while 
Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed 

to near; 
Then, as new-waked, thus gratefully re- 
plied : — 



" What thanks sufficient, or what recom- 
pense 
Equal, have I to render thee, divine 
Historian, who thus largely hast allayed 
The thirst I had of knowledge, and vout- 

safed 
This friendly condescension to relate 
Things else by me unsearchable — now 
heard 10 

With wonder, but delight, and, as is due, 
With glory attributed to the high 
Creator ? Something yet of doubt re- 
mains, 
Which only thy solution can resolve. 
When I behold this goodly frame, this 

World, 
Of Heaven and Earth consisting, and com- 
pute 



i86 



PARADISE LOST 



Their magnitudes — this Earth, a spot, a 

grain, 
An atom, with the Firmament compared 
And all her numbered stars, that seem to 

rowl 
Spaces incomprehensible (for such 20 

Their distance argues, and their swift re- 
turn 
Diurnal) merely to officiate light 
Round this opacous Earth, this punctual 

spot, 
One day and night, in all their vast survey 
Useless besides — reasoning, I oft admire 
How Nature, wise and frugal, could com- 
mit 
Such disproportions, with superfluous hand 
So many nobler bodies to create, 
Greater so manifold, to this one use, 
For aught appears, and on their Orbs im- 
pose 30 
Such restless revolution day by day 
Repeated, while the sedentary Earth, 
That better might with far less compass 

move, 
Served by more noble than herself, attains 
Her end without least motion, and receives, 
As tribute, such a sumless journey brought 
Of incorporeal speed, her warmth and light: 
Speed, to describe whose swiftness number 
fails." 
So spake our Sire, and by his countenance 
seemed 
Entering on studious thoughts abstruse; 
which Eve 40 

Perceiving, where she sat retired in sight, 
With lowliness majestic from her seat, 
And grace that won who saw to wish her 

stay, 
Rose, and went forth among her fruits and 

flowers, 
To visit how they prospered, bud and bloom, 
Her nursery; they at her coming sprung, 
And, touched by her fair tendance, gladlier 

grew. 
Yet went she not as not with such discourse 
Delighted, or not capable her ear 
Of what was high. Such pleasure she re- 
served, 50 
Adam relating, she sole auditress; 
Her husband the relater she preferred 
Before the Angel, and of him to ask 
Chose rather; he, she knew, would inter- 
mix 
Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute 
With conjugal caresses: from his lip 



Not words alone pleased her. Oh, when 

meet now 
Such pairs, in love and mutual honour 

joined ? 
With goddess-like demeanour forth she 

went, 
Not unattended; for on her as Queen 60 
A pomp of winning Graces waited still, 
And from about her shot darts of desire 
Into all eyes, to wish her still in sight. 
And Raphael now to Adam's doubt pro- 
posed 
Benevolent and facile thus replied: — 
" To ask or search I blame thee not; for 
Heaven 
Is as the Book of God before thee set, 
Wherein to read his wondrous works, and 

learn 
His seasons, hours, or days, or months, or 

years. 
This to attain, whether Heaven move or 
Earth 70 

Imports not, if thou reckon right; the rest 
From Man or Angel the great Architect 
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge 
His secrets, to be scanned by them who 

ought 
Rather admire. Or, if they list to try 
Conjecture, he his fabric of the Heavens 
Hath left to their disputes — perhaps to 

move 
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide 
Hereafter, when they come to model Hea- 
ven, 
And calculate the stars; how they will 
wield 80 

The mighty frame; how build, unbuild, 

contrive 
To save appearances; how gird the Sphere 
With Centric and Eccentric scribbled o'er, 
Cycle and Epicycle, orb in orb. 
Already by thy reasoning this I guess, 
Who art to lead thy offspring, and suppos- 

est 
That bodies bright and greater should not 

serve 
The less not bright, nor Heaven such jour- 
neys run, 
Earth sitting still, when she alone receives 
The benefit. Consider, first, that great 90 
Or bright infers not excellence. The Earth, 
Though, in comparison of Heaven, so small, 
Nor glistering, may of solid good contain 
More plenty than the Sun that barren 
shines, 



BOOK EIGHTH 



187 



Whose virtue on itself works no effect, 
But in the fruitful Earth; there first re- 
ceived, 
His beams, unactive else, their vigour find. 
Yet not to Earth are those bright lumina- 
ries 
Officious, but to thee, Earth's habitant. 
And, for the Heaven's wide circuit, let it 

speak 100 

The Maker's high magnificence, who built 
So spacious, and his line stretched out so 

far, 
That Man may know he dwells not in his 

own — 
An edifice too large for him to fill, 
Lodged in a small partition, and the rest 
Ordained for uses to his Lord best known. 
The swiftness of those Circles attribute, 
Though numberless, to his Omnipotence, 
That to corporeal substances could add 
Speed almost spiritual. Me thou think'st 

not slow, no 

Who since the morning-hour set out from 

Heaven 
Where God resides, and ere mid-day arrived 
In Eden — distance inexpressible 
By numbers that have name. But this I 

urge, 
Admitting motion in the Heavens, to shew 
Invalid that which thee to doubt it moved; 
Not that I so affirm, though so it seem 
To thee who hast thy dwelling here on 

Earth. 
God, to remove his ways from human 

sense, 
Placed Heaven from Earth so far, that 

earthly sight, 120 

If it presume, might err in things too high, 
And no advantage gain. What if the Sun 
Be centre to the World, and other Stars, 
By his attractive virtue and their own 
Incited, dance about him various rounds ? 
Their wandering course, now high, now low, 

then hid, 
Progressive, retrograde, or standing still, 
In six thou seest ; and what if, seventh to 

these, 
The planet Earth, so steadfast though she 

seem, 
Insensibly three different motions move? 130 
Which else to several spheres thou must 

ascribe, 
Moved contrary with thwart obliquities, 
Or save the Sun his labour, and that swift 
Nocturnal and diurnal rhomb supposed, 



Invisible else above all stars, the wheel 
Of Day and Night; which needs not thy 

belief, 
If Earth, industrious of herself, fetch Day, 
Travelling east, and with her part averse 
From the Sun's beam meet Night, her 

other part 
Still luminous by his ray. What if that 
light, 140 

Sent from her through the wide transpicu- 
ous air, 
To the terrestrial Moon be as a star, 
Enlightening her by day, as she by night 
This Earth — reciprocal, if land be there, 
Fields and inhabitants ? Her spots thou 

seest 
As clouds, and clouds may rain, and rain 

produce 
Fruits in her softened soil, for some to eat 
Allotted there; and other Suns, perhaps, 
With their attendant Moons, thou wilt de- 
scry, 
Communicating male and female light — 150 
Which two great sexes animate the World, 
Stored in each Orb perhaps with some that 

live. 
For such vast room in Nature unpossessed 
By living soul, desert and desolate, 
Only to shine, yet scarce to contribute 
Each Orb a glimpse of light, conveyed so 

far 
Down to this habitable, which returns 
Light back to them, is obvious to dispute. 
But whether thus these things, or whether 

not — 
Whether the Sun, predominant in hea- 
ven, 160 
Rise on the Earth, or Earth rise on the Sun; 
He from the east his flaming road begin, 
Or she from west her silent course advance 
With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps 
On her soft axle, while she paces even, 
And bears thee soft with the smooth air 

along — 
Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid: 
Leave them to God above; him serve and 

fear. 
Of other creatures as him pleases best, 
Wherever placed, let him dispose; joy 
thou 170 

In what he gives to thee, this Paradise 
And thy fair Eve; Heaven is for thee too 

high 
To know what passes there. Be lowly 



PARADISE LOST 



Think only what concerns thee and thy be- 
ing; 
Dream not of other worlds, what creatures 

there 
Live, in what state, condition, or degree — 
Contented that thus far hath been revealed 
Not of Earth only, but of highest Hea- 
ven." 
To whom thus Adam, cleared of doubt, 
replied: — i 79 

" How fully hast thou satisfied me, pure 
Intelligence of Heaven, Angel serene, 
And, freed from intricacies, taught to live 
The easiest way, nor with perplexing 

thoughts 
To interrupt the sweet of life, from which 
God hath bid dwell far off all anxious 

cares, 
And not molest us, unless we ourselves 
Seek them with wandering thoughts, and 

notions vain ! 
But apt the mind or fancy is to rove 
Unchecked; and of her roving is no end, 
Till, warned, or by experience taught, she 
learn 190 

That not to know at large of things remote 
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know 
That which before us lies in daily life, 
Is the prime wisdom: what is more is 

fume, 
Or emptiness, or fond impertinence, 
And renders us in things that most con- 
cern 
Unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek. 
Therefore from this high pitch let us de- 
scend 
A lower flight, and speak of things at hand 
Useful; whence, haply, mention may arise 
Of something not unseasonable to ask, 201 
By sufferance, and thy wonted favour, 

deigned. 
Thee I have heard relating what was done 
Ere my remembrance ; now hear me relate 
My story, which, perhaps, thou hast not 

heard. 
And day is yet not spent; till then thou 

seest 
How subtly to detain thee I devise, 
Inviting thee to hear while I relate — 
Fond, were it not in hope of thy reply. 
For, while I sit with thee, I seem in Hea- 
ven; 210 
And sweeter thy discourse is to my ear 
Than fruits of palm-tree, pleasantest to 
thirst 



And hunger both, from labour, at the hour 
Of sweet repast. Thev satiate, and soon 

fill, 
Though pleasant; but thy words, with grace 

divine 
Imbued, bring to their sweetness no sa- 
tiety." 
To whom thus Raphael answered, hea- 
venly meek: — 
" Nor are thy lips ungraceful, Sire of Men, 
Nor tongue ineloquent; for God on thee 
Abundantly his gifts hath also poured, 220 
Inward and outward both, his image fair: 
Speaking, or mute, all comeliness and grace 
Attends thee, and each word, each motion, 

forms. 
Nor less think we in Heaven of thee on 

Earth 
Than of our fellow-servant, and inquire 
Gladly into the ways of God with Man; 
For God, we see, hath honoured thee, and 

set 
On Man his equal love. Say therefore on; 
For I that day was absent, as befell, 229 
Bound on a voyage uncouth and obscure, 
Far on excursion toward the gates of Hell, 
Squared in full legion (such command we 

had), 
To see that none thence issued forth a spy 
Or enemy, while God was in his work, 
Lest he, incensed at such eruption bold, 
Destruction with Creation might have 

mixed. 
Not that they durst without his leave at- 
tempt; 
But us he sends upon his high behests 
For state, as sovran King, and to inure 
Our prompt obedience. Fast we found, 
fast shut, 240 

The dismal gates, and barricadoed strong, 
But, long ere our approaching, heard with- 
in 
Noise, other than the sound of dance or 

song — 
Torment, and loud lament, and furious rage. 
Glad we returned up to the coasts of Light 
Ere Sabbath-evening; so we had in charge. 
But thy relation now; for I attend, 
Pleased with thy words no less than thou 
with mine." 
So spake the godlike Power, and thus 
our Sire : — 
" For Man to tell how human life began 250 
Is hard; for who himself beginning knew ? 
Desire with thee still longer to converse 



BOOK EIGHTH 



189 






Induced me. As new-waked from sound- 
est sleep, 

Soft on the flowery herb I found me laid, 

In balmy sweat, which with his beams the 
Sun 

Soon dried, and on the reeking moisture 
fed. 

Straight toward Heaven my wondering eyes 
I turned, 

And gazed a while the ample sky, till, 
raised 258 

By quick instinctive motion, up I sprung, 

As thitherward endeavouring, and upright 

Stood on my feet. About me round I saw 

Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny 
plains, 

And liquid lapse of murmuring streams; 
by these, 

Creatures that lived and moved, and walked 
or flew, 

Birds on the branches warbling: all things 
smiled; 

With fragrance and with joy my heart o'er- 
flowed. 

Myself I then perused, and limb by limb 

Surveyed, and sometimes went, and some- 
times ran 

With supple joints, as lively vigour led; 

But who I was, or where, or from what 
cause, 270 

Knew not. To speak I tried, and forth- 
with spake; 

My tongue obeyed, and readily could name 

Whate'er I saw. ' Thou Sun,' said I, ' fair 
light, 

And thou enlightened Earth, so fresh and 

Ye hills and dales, ye rivers, woods, and 
plains, 

And ye that live and move, fair creatures, 
tell, 

Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus, how here! 

Not of myself; by some great Maker then, 

In goodness and in power prse-eminent. 

Tell me, how may I know him, how adore, 

From whom I have that thus I move and 
live, 281 

And feel that I am happier than I know ! ' 

While thus I called, and strayed I knew not 
whither, 

From where I first drew air, and first be- 
held 

This happy light, when answer none re- 
turned, 

On a green shady bank, profuse of flowers, 



Pensive I sat me down. There gentle 

sleep 
First found me, and with soft oppression 

seized 
My drowsed sense, untroubled, though I 

thought 
I then was passing to my former state 290 
Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve : 
When suddenly stood at my head a Dream, 
Whose inward apparition gently moved 
My fancy to believe I yet had being, 
And lived. One came, methought, of shape 

divine, 
And said, ' Thy mansion wants thee, Adam; 

rise, 
First Man, of men innumerable ordained 
First father ! called by thee, I come thy 

guide 
To the Garden of bliss, thy seat prepared.' 
So saying, by the hand he took me, raised, 
And over fields and waters, as in air 301 
Smooth sliding without step, last led me up 
A woody mountain, whose high top was 

plain, 
A circuit wide, enclosed, with goodliest 

trees 
Planted, with walks and bowers, that what 

I saw 
Of Earth before scarce pleasant seemed. 

Each tree 
Loaden with fairest fruit, that hung to the 

eye 
Tempting, stirred in me sudden appetite 
To pluck and eat; whereat I waked, and 

found 
Before mine eyes all real, as the dream 310 
Had lively shadowed. Here had new be- 
gun 
My wandering, had not He who was my 

guide 
Up hither from among the trees appeared, 
Presence Divine. Rejoicing, but with awe, 
In adoration at his feet I fell 
Submiss. He reared me, and, ' Whom thou 

sought'st I am,' 
Said mildly, * Author of all this thou seest 
Above, or round about thee, or beneath. 
This Paradise I give thee; count it thine 
To till and keep, and of the fruit to eat. 320 
Of every tree that in the Garden grows 
Eat freely with glad heart; fear here no 

dearth. 
But of the tree whose operation brings 
Knowledge of Good and 111, which I have 

set, 



190 



PARADISE LOST 



The pledge of thy obedience and thy faith, 
Amid the garden by the Tree of Life — 
Remember what I warn thee — shun to 

taste, 
And shun the bitter consequence : for know, 
The day thou eat'st thereof, my sole com- 
mand 
Transgressed, inevitably thou shalt die, 330 
From that day mortal, and this happy state 
Shalt lose, expelled from hence into a 

world 
Of woe and sorrow.' Sternly he pro- 
nounced 
The rigid interdiction, which resounds 
Yet dreadful in mine ear, though in my 

choice 
Not to incur; but soon his clear aspect' 
Returned, and gracious purpose thus re- 
newed: — 
* Not only these fair bounds, but all the 

Earth 
To thee and to thy race I give; as lords 
Possess it, and all things that therein 
live, 340 

Or live in sea or air, beast, fish, and fowl. 
In sign whereof, each bird and beast be- 
hold 
After their kinds; I bring them to receive 
From thee their names, and pay thee fealty 
With low subjection. Understand the same 
Of fish within their watery residence, 
Not hither summoned, since they cannot 

change 
Their element to draw the thinner air.' 
As thus he spake, each bird and beast be- 
hold 
Approaching two and two — these cower- 
ing low 350 
With blandishment; each bird stooped on 

his wing. 
I named them as they passed, and under- 
stood 
Their nature; with such knowledge God 

endued 
My sudden apprehension. But in these 
I found not what methought I wanted 

still, 
And to the Heavenly Vision thus pre- 
sumed: — 
" ' O, by what name — for Thou above 
all these, 
Above mankind, or aught than mankind 

higher, 
Surpassest far my naming — how may I 
Adore thee, Author of this Universe, 360 



And all this good to Man, for whose well- 
being 
So amply, and with hands so liberal, 
Thou hast provided all things ? But with 

me 
I see not who partakes. In solitude 
What happiness ? who can enjoy alone, 
Or, all enjoying, what contentment find ? ' 
Thus I, presumptuous; and the Vision 

bright, 
As with a smile more brightened, thus re- 
plied : — 
" « W r hat call'st thou solitude ? Is not 
the Earth 369 

With various living creatures, and the Air, 
Replenished, and all these at thy command 
To come and play before thee ? Know'st 

thou not 
Their language and their ways ? They 

also know, 
And reason not contemptibly; with these 
Find pastime, and bear rule; thy realm is 

large.' 
So spake the Universal Lord and seemed 
So ordering. I, with leave of speech im- 
plored, 
And humble deprecation, thus replied: — 
" ' Let not my words offend thee, Hea- 
venly Power; 
My Maker, be propitious while I speak. 380 
Hast thou not made me here thy substitute, 
And these inferior far beneath me set ? 
Among unequals what society 
Can sort, what harmony or true delight ? 
Which must be mutual, in proportion due 
Given and received; but, in disparity, 
The one intense, the other still remiss, 
Cannot well suit with either, but soon 

prove 
Tedious alike. Of fellowship I speak 
Such as I seek, fit to participate 390 

All rational delight, wherein the brute 
Cannot be human consort. They rejoice 
Each with their kind, lion with lioness; 
So fitly them in pairs thou hast combined: 
Much less can bird with beast, or fish with 

fowl, 
So well converse, nor with the ox the ape; 
Worse, then, can man with beast, and least 
of all.' 
" Whereto the Almighty answered, not 
displeased: — 
' A nice and subtle happiness, I see, 
Thou to thyself proposest, in the choice 400 
Of thy associates, Adam, and wilt taste 



BOOK EIGHTH 



191 



No pleasure, though in pleasure, solitary. 
What thiuk'st thou, then, of Me, and this 

my state ? 
Seem I to thee sufficiently possessed 
Of happiness, or not, who am alone 
From all eternity ? for none I know 
Second to me or like, equal much less. 
How have I, then, with whom to hold con- 
verse, 
Save with the creatures which I made, and 

those 
To me inferior infinite descents 410 

Beneath what other creatures are to thee ? ' 
"He ceased. I lowly answered: — 'To 

attain 
The highth and depth of thy eternal ways 
All human thoughts come short, Supreme 

of Things ! 
Thou in thyself art perfet, and in Thee 
Is no deficience found. Not so is Man, 
But in degree — the cause of his desire 
By conversation with his like to help 
Or solace his defects. No need that thou 
Should'st propagate, already infinite, 420 
And through all numbers absolute, though 

One; 
But Man by number is to manifest 
His single imperfection, and beget 
Like of his like, his image multiplied, 
In unity defective; which requires 
Collateral love, and dearest amity. 
Thou, in thy secrecy although alone, 
Best with thyself accompanied, seek'st not 
Social communication — yet, so pleased, 
Canst raise thy creature to what highth 

thou wilt 430 

Of union or communion, deified; 
I, by conversing, cannot these erect 
From prone, nor in their ways complacence 

find.' 
Thus I emboldened spake, and freedom 

used 
Permissive, and acceptance found; which 

gained 
This answer from the gratious Voice Di- 
vine: — 
" ' Thus far to try thee, Adam, I was 

pleased, 
And find thee knowing not of beasts alone, 
Which thou hast rightly named, but of 

thyself — 
Expressing well the spirit within thee free, 
My image, not imparted to the brute; 441 
Whose fellowship, therefore, unmeet for 

thee, 



Good reason was thou freely shouldst dis- 
like. 
And be so minded still. I, ere thou spak'st, 
Knew it not good for Man to be alone, 
And no such company as then thou saw'st 
Intended thee — for trial only brought, 
To see how thou couldst judge of fit and 

meet. 
What next I bring shall please thee, be 
assured, 449 

Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self, 
Thy wish exactly to thy heart's desire.' 
"He ended, or I heard no more; for 
now 
My earthly, by his heavenly overpowered, 
Which it had long stood under, strained to 

the highth 
In that celestial colloquy sublime, 
As with an object that excels the sense, 
Dazzled and spent, sunk down, and sought 

repair 
Of sleep, which instantly fell on me, called 
By Nature as in aid, and closed mine eyes. 
Mine eyes he closed, but open left the cell 
Of fancy, my internal sight; by which, 461 
Abstract as in a trance, methought I saw, 
Though sleeping, where I lay, and saw the 

Shape 
Still glorious before whom awake I stood; 
Who, stooping, opened my left side, and 

took 
From thence a rib, with cordial spirits warm, 
And life-blood streaming fresh; wide was 

the wound, 
But suddenly with flesh filled up and healed. 
The rib he formed and fashioned with his 
hands; 469 

Under his forming hands a creature grew, 
Man-like, but different sex, so lovely fair 
That what seemed fair in all the world 

seemed now 
Mean, or in her summed up, in her con- 
tained 
And in her looks, which from that time in- 
fused 
Sweetness into my heart unfelt before, 
And into all things from her air inspired 
The spirit of love and amorous delight. 
She disappeared, and left me dark; I waked 
To find her, or for ever to deplore 479 

Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure: 
When, out of hope, behold her not far off, 
Such as I saw her in my dream, adorned 
With what all Earth or Heaven could be- 
stow 



192 



PARADISE LOST 



To make her amiable. On she came, 
Led by her Heavenly Maker, though un- 
seen 
And guided by his voice, nor uninformed 
Of nuptial sanctity and marriage rites. 
Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her 

eye, 
In every gesture dignity and love. 489 

I, overjoyed, could not forbear aloud: — 
" * This turn hath made amends ; thou 
hast fulfilled 
Thy words, Creator bounteous and benign, 
Giver of all things fair — but fairest this 
Of all thy gifts ! — nor enviest. I now see 
Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, my Self 
Before me. Woman is her name, of Man 
Extracted; for this cause he shall forgo 
Father and mother, and to his wife adhere, 
And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one 
soul.' 
" She heard me thus; and, though divinely 
brought, 500 

Yet innocence and virgin modesty, 
Her virtue, and the conscience of her worth, 
That would be wooed, and not unsought 

be won, 
Not obvious, not obtrusive, but retired, 
The more desirable — or, to say all, 
Nature herself, though pure of sinful 

thought — 
Wrought in her so, that, seeing me, she 

turned. 
I followed her; she what was honour knew, 
And with obsequious majesty approved 509 
My pleaded reason. To the nuptial bower 
I led her blushing like the Morn ; all Hea- 
ven, 
And happy constellations, on that hour 
Shed their selectest influence; the Earth 
Gave sign of gratulation, and each hill; 
Joyous the birds; fresh gales and gentle 

airs 
Whispered it to the woods, and from their 

wings 
Flung rose, flung odours from the spicy 

shrub, 
Disporting, till the amorous bird of night 
Sung spousal, and bid haste the Evening- 
star 
On his hill-top to light the bridal lamp. 520 
" Thus have I told thee all my state, and 
brought 
My story to the sum of earthly bliss 
Which I enjoy, and must confess to find 
In all things else delight indeed, but such 



As, used or not, works in the mind no 

change, 
Nor vehement desire — these delicacies 
I mean of taste, sight, smell, herbs, fruits, 

and flowers, 
Walks, and the melody of birds: but here, 
Far otherwise, transported I behold, 529 
Transported touch ; here passion first I 

felt, 
Commotion strange, in all enjoyments else 
Superior and unmoved, here only weak 
Against the charm of beauty's powerful 

glance. 
Or Nature failed in me, and left some part 
Not proof enough such object to sustain, 
Or, from my side subducting, took perhaps 
More than enough — at least on her be- 
stowed 
Too much of ornament, in outward show 
Elaborate, of inward less exact. 
For well I understand in the prime end 540 
Of Nature her the inferior, in the mind 
And inward faculties, which most excel; 
In outward also her resembling less 
His image who made both, and less ex- 
pressing 
The character of that dominion given 
O'er other creatures. Yet when I ap- 
proach 
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems 547 
And in herself complete, so well to know 
Her own, that what she wills to do or say 
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best. 
All higher Knowledge in her presence falls 
Degraded; Wisdom in discourse with her 
Loses, discountenanced, and like Folly 

shews; 
Authority and Reason on her wait, 
As one intended first, not after made 
Occasionally; and, to consum'mate all, 
Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat 
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe 
About her, as a guard angelic placed." 
To whom the Angel, with contracted 
brow: — 560 

" Accuse not Nature ! she hath done her 

part; 
Do thou but thine ! and be not diffident 
Of Wisdom; she deserts thee not, if thou 
Dismiss not her, when most thou need'st 

her nigh, 
By attributing overmuch to things 
Less excellent, as thou thyself perceiv'st. 
For, what admir'st thou, what transports 
thee so ? 



BOOK EIGHTH 



*93 



An outside — fair, no doubt, and worthy 

well 
Thy cherishing, thy honouring, and thy 

love; 
Not thy subjection. Weigh with her thy- 
self; 570 
Then value. Oft - times nothing profits 

more 
Than self-esteem, grounded on just and 

right 
Well managed. Of that skill the more 

thou know'st, 
The more she will acknowledge thee her 

head, 
And to realities yield all her shows — 
Made so adorn for thy delight the more, 
So awful, that with honour thou may'st love 
Thy mate, who sees when thou art seen 

least wise. 
But, if the sense of touch, whereby man- 
kind 
Is propagated, seem such dear delight 580 
Beyond all other, think the same voutsafed 
To cattle and each beast; which would not 

be 
To them made common and divulged, if 

aught 
Therein enjoyed were worthy to subdue 
The soul of Man, or passion in him move. 
What higher in her society thou find'st 
Attractive, human, rational, love still: 
In loving thou dost well ; in passion not, 
Wherein true Love consists not. Love re- 
fines 
The thoughts, and heart enlarges — hath 
his seat 590 

In Reason, and is judicious, is the scale 
By which to Heavenly Love thou may'st 

ascend, 
Not sunk in carnal pleasure; for which 

cause 
Among the beasts no mate for thee was 
found." 
To whom thus, half abashed, Adam re- 
plied : — 
" Neither her outside formed so fair, nor 

aught 
In procreation, common to all kinds 
(Though higher of the genial bed by far, 
And with mysterious reverence, I deem), 
So much delights me as those graceful 
acts, 600 

Those thousand decencies, that daily flow 
From all her words and actions, mixed with 
love 



And sweet compliance, which declare un- 
feigned 
Union of mind, or in us both one soul — 
Harmony to behold in wedded pair 
More grateful than harmonious sound to 

the ear. 
Yet these subject not; I to thee disclose 
What inward thence I feel, not therefore 

foiled, 
Who meet with various objects, from the 

sense 
Variously representing, yet, still free, 610 
Approve the best, and follow what I ap- 
prove. 
To love thou blam'st me not — for Love, 

thou say'st, 
Leads up to Heaven, is both the way and 

guide; 
Bear with me, then, if lawful what I ask. 
Love not the Heavenly Spirits, and how 

their love 
Express they — by looks only, or do they 

mix 
Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch ? " 
To whom the Angel, with a smile that 
glowed 
Celestial rosy-red, Love's proper hue, 
Answered: — " Let it suffice thee that thou 
know'st 620 

Us happy, and without Love no happiness. 
Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy 'st 
(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy 
In eminence, and obstacle find none 
Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive 

bars. 
Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace, 
Total they mix, union of pure with pure 
Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need 
As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with 

soul. 
But I can now no more : the parting Sun 
Beyond the Earth's green Cape and ver- 
dant Isles 631 
Hesperean sets, my signal to depart. 
Be strong, live happy, and love ! but first 

of all 
Him whom to love is to obey, and keep 
His great command ; take heed lest passion 

sway 
Thy judgment to do aught which else free- 
will 
Would not admit; thine and of all thy sons 
The weal or woe in thee is placed; be- 
ware ! 
I in thy persevering shall rejoice, 



194 



PARADISE LOST 



And all the Blest. Stand fast; to stand or 
fall 640 

Free in thine own arbitrement it lies. 

Perfet within, no outward aid require; 

And all temptation to transgress repel." 
So saying, he arose; whom Adam thus 

Followed with benediction: — "Since to 
part, 

Go, Heavenly Guest, Ethereal Messenger, 



Sent from whose sovran goodness I adore ! 

Gentle ta me and affable hath been 

Thy condescension, and shall be honoured 

ever 649 

With grateful memory. Thou to Mankind 

Be good and friendly still, and oft return! " 

So parted they, the Angel up to Heaven 

From the thick shade, and Adam to his 

bower. 



BOOK IX 



THE ARGUMENT 

Satan, having compassed the Earth, with meditated 
guile returns as a mist by night into Paradise ; enters 
into the Serpent sleeping. Adam and Eve in the morn- 
ing go forth to their labours, which Eve proposes to 
divide in several places, each labouring apart : Adam 
consents not, alleging the danger lest that Enemy of 
whom they were forewarned should attempt her found 
alone. Eve, loth to be thought not circumspect or firm 
enough, urges her going apart, the rather desirous to 
make trial of her strength ; Adam at last yields. The 
Serpent finds her alone : his subtle approach, first gaz- 
ing, then speaking, with much flattery extolling Eve 
above all other creatures. Eve, wondering to hear the 
Serpent speak, asks how he attained to human speech 
and such understanding not till now ; the Serpent an- 
swers that by tasting of a certain Tree in the Garden 
he attained both to speech and reason, till then void of 
both. Eve requires him to bring her to that tree, and 
finds it to be the Tree of Knowledge forbidden : the 
Serpent, now grown bolder, with many wiles and argu- 
ments induces her at length to eat. She, pleased with 
the taste, deliberates a while whether to impart thereof 
to Adam or not ; at last brings him of the fruit ; relates 
what persuaded her to eat thereof. Adam, at first 
amazed, but perceiving her lost, resolves, through vehe- 
mence of love, to perish with her, and, extenuating the 
trespass, eats also of the fruit. The effects thereof in 
them both ; they seek to cover their nakedness ; then 
fall to variance and accusation of one another. 

No more of talk where God or Angel 

Guest 
With Man, as with his friend, familiar 

used 
To sit indulgent, and with him partake 
Rural repast, permitting him the while 
Venial discourse unblamed. I now must 

change 
Those notes to tragic — foul distrust, and 

breach 
Disloyal, on the part of man, revolt 
And disobedience; on the part of Heaven, 
Now alienated, distance and distaste, 
Anger and just rebuke, and judgment 

given, ic 

That brought into this World a world of 

woe, 
Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery, 



Death's harbinger. Sad task ! yet argu- 
ment 
Not less but more heroic than the wrauth 
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued 
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage 
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused; 
Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long 
Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son: 
If answerable style I can obtain 20 

Of my celestial Patroness, who deigns 
Her nightly visitation unimplored, 
And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires 
Easy my unpremeditated verse, 
Since first this subject for heroic song 
Pleased me, long choosing and beginning 

late, 
Not sedulous by nature to indite 
Wars, hitherto the only argument 
Heroic deemed, chief maistrie to dissect 
With long and tedious havoc fabled 
knights 30 

In battles feigned (the better fortitude 
Of patience and heroic martyrdom 
Unsung), or to describe races and games, 
Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields, 
Impreses quaint, caparisons and steeds, 
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights 
At joust and tournament; then marshalled 

feast 
Served up in hall with sewers andseneshals: 
The skill of artifice or office mean; 
Not that which justly gives heroic name 40 
To person or to poem ! Me, of these 
Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument 
Remains, sufficient of itself to raise 
That name, unless an age too late, or cold 
Climat, or years, damp my intended wing 
Depressed; and much they may if all be 

mine, 
Not Hers who brings it nightly to my ear. 
The Sun was sunk, and after him the 
Star 
Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring 
Twilight upon the Earth, short arbiter 50 



BOOK NINTH 



*95 



'Twixt day and night, and now from end to 

end 
Night's hemisphere had veiled the horizon 

round, 
When Satan, who late fled before the threats 
Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improved 
In meditated fraud and malice, bent 
On Man's destruction, maugre what might 

hap 
Of heavier on himself, fearless returned. 
By night he fled, and at midnight returned 
From compassing the Earth — cautious of 

day 
Since Uriel, Regent of the Sun, descried 60 
His entrance, and forewarned the Cheru- 
bim 
That kept their watch. Thence, full of an- 
guish, driven, 
The space of seven continued nights he 

rode 
With darkness — thrice the equinoctial line 
He circled, four times crossed the car of 

Night 
From pole to pole, traversing each colure — 
On the eighth returned, and on the coast 

averse 
From entrance or cherubic watch by stealth 
Found unsuspected way. There was a place 
(Now not, though Sin, not Time, first 

wraught the change) 70 

Where Tigris, at the foot of Paradise, 
Into a gulf shot under ground, till part 
Rose up a fountain by the Tree of Life. 
In with the river sunk, and with it rose, 
Satan, involved in rising mist; then sought 
Where to lie hid. Sea he had searched and 

land 
From Eden over Pontus, and the Pool 
Mseotis, up beyond the river Ob; 
Downward as far antartic; and, in length, 
West from Orontes to the ocean barred 80 
At Darien, thence to the land where flows 
Ganges and Indus. Thus the orb he roamed 
With narrow search, and with inspection 

deep 
Considered every creature, which of all 
Most opportune might serve his wiles, and 

found 
The Serpent subtlest beast of all the field. 
Him, after long debate, irresolute 
Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence 

chose 
Fit vessel, fittest Imp of fraud, in whom 
To enter, and his dark suggestions hide 90 
From sharpest sight; for in the wily snake 



Whatever sleights none would suspicious 

mark, 
As from his wit and native subtlety 
Proceeding, which, in other beasts observed, 
Doubt might beget of diabolic power 
Active within beyond the sense of brute. 
Thus he resolved, but first from inward 

grief 
His bursting passion into plaints thus 

poured: — 
" O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not 

preferred 
More justly, seat worthier of Gods, as 

built 100 

With second thoughts, reforming what was 

old! 
For what God, after better, worse would 

build ? 
Terrestrial Heaven, danced round by other 

Heavens, 
That shine, yet bear their bright officious 

lamps, 
Light above light, for thee alone, as seems, 
In thee concentring all their precious beams 
Of sacred influence ! As God in Heaven 
Is centre, yet extends to all, so thou 
Centring receiv'st from all those orbs; in 

thee, 
Not in themselves, all their known virtue 

appears, no 

Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth 
Of creatures animate with gradual life 
Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up 

in Man. 
With what delight could I have walked 

thee round, 
If I could joy in aught — sweet interchange 
Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and plains, 
Now land, now sea, and shores with forest 

crowned, 
Rocks, dens, and caves ! But I in none of 

these 
Find place or refuge ; and the more I see 
Pleasures about me, so much more I feel 120 
Torment within me, as from the hateful 

siege 
Of contraries ; all good to me becomes 
Bane, and in Heaven much worse would be 

my state. 
But neither here seek I, no, nor in Heaven, 
To dwell, unless by maistring Heaven's 

Supreme ; 
Nor hope to be myself less miserable 
By what I seek, but others to make such 
As I, though thereby worse to me redound. 



196 



PARADISE LOST 



For only in destroying I find ease 
To my relentless thoughts; and him de- 
stroyed, 130 
Or won to what may work his utter loss, 
For whom all this was made, all this will 

soon 
Follow, as to him linked in weal or woe: 
In woe then, that destruction wide may 

range ! 
To me shall be the glory sole among 
The Infernal Powers, in one day to have 

marred 
What he, Almighty styled, six nights and 

days 
Continued making, and who knows how long 
Before had been contriving? though per- 
haps 
Not longer than since I in one night freed 140 
From servitude inglorious well nigh half 
The Angelic Name, and thinner left the 

throng 
Of his adorers. He, to be avenged, 
And to repair his numbers thus impaired — 
Whether such virtue, spent of old, now 

failed 
More Angels to create (if they at least 
Are his created), or to spite us more — 
Determined to advance into our room 
A creature formed of earth, and him endow, 
Exalted from so base original, 150 

With heavenly spoils, our spoils. What he 

decreed 
He effected; Man he made, and for him 

built 
Magnificent this World, and Earth his seat, 
Him Lord pronounced, and, O indignity ! 
Subjected to his service Angel-wings 
And flaming ministers, to watch and tend 
Their earthy charge. Of these the vigi- 
lance 
I dread, and to elude, thus wrapt in mist 
Of midnight vapour, glide obscure, and pry 
In every bush and brake, where hap may 
find 160 

The Serpent sleeping, in whose mazy folds 
To hide me, and the dark intent I bring. 
O foul descent ! that I, who erst contended 
With Gods to sit the highest, am now con- 
strained 
Into a beast, and, mixed with bestial slime, 
This essence to incarnate and imbrute, 
That to the highth of deity aspired ! 
But what will not ambition and revenge 
Descend to ? Who aspires must down as 
low 



As high he soared, obnoxious, first or last, 170 
To basest things. Revenge, at first though 

sweet, 
Bitter ere long back on itself recoils. 
Let it; I reck not, so it light well aimed, 
Since higher I fall short, on him who next 
Provokes my envy, this new favourite 
Of Heaven, this Man of Clay, son of de- 
spite, 
Whom, us the more to spite, his Maker 

raised 
From dust : spite then with spite is best re- 
paid." 
So saying, through each thicket, dank or 
dry, 
Like a black mist low-creeping, he held 
on 180 

His midnight search, where soonest he 

might find 
The Serpent. Him fast sleeping soon he 

found, 
In labyrinth of many a round self-rowled, 
His head the midst, well stored with subtle 

wiles : 
Not yet in horrid shade or dismal den: 
Nor nocent yet, but on the grassy herb, 
Fearless, unfeared, he slept. In at his 

mouth 
The Devil entered, and his brutal sense, 
In heart or head, possessing soon inspired 
With act intelligential ; but his sleep 190 
Disturbed not, waiting close the approach 
of morn. 
Now, whenas sacred light began to dawn 
In Eden on the humid flowers, that breathed 
Their morning incense, when all things that 

breathe 
From the Earth's great altar send up silent 

praise 
To the Creator, and his nostrils fill 
With grateful smell, forth came the human 

pair, 
And joined their vocal worship to the quire 
Of creatures wanting voice ; that done, par- 
take 
The season, prime for sweetest scents and 
airs ; 200 

Then com'mune how that day they best may 

Their growing work — for much their work 

outgrew 
The hands' dispatch of two gardening so 

wide: 
And Eve first to her husband thus began: — 
" Adam, well may we labour still to dress 



BOOK NINTH 



197 



This Garden, still to tend plant, herb, and 

flower, 
Our pleasant task enjoined; but, till more 

hands 
Aid us, the work under our labour grows, 
Luxurious by restraint: what we by day 
Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind, 
One night or two with wanton growth de- 
rides, 211 
Tending to wild. Thou, therefore, now 

advise, 
Or hear what to my mind first thoughts 

present. 
Let us divide our labours — thou where 

choice 
Leads thee, or where most needs, whether 

to wind 
The woodbine round this arbour, or direct 
The clasping ivy where to climb ; while I 
In yonder spring of roses intermixed 
With myrtle find what to redress till noon. 
For, while so near each other thus all day 
Our task we choose, what wonder if so 
near 221 

Looks intervene and smiles, or objects new 
Casual discourse draw on, which intermits 
Our day's work, brought to little, though 

begun 
Early, and the hour of supper comes un- 
earned ! " 
To whom mild answer Adam thus re- 
turned: — 
" Sole Eve, associate sole, to me beyond 
Compare above all living creatures dear ! 
Well hast thou motioned, well thy thoughts 

im ployed 

How we might best fulfil the work which 

here 230 

God hath assigned us, nor of me shalt pass 

Unpraised; for nothing lovelier can be 

found 
In woman than to study household good, 
And good works in her husband to pro- 
mote. 
Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed 
Labour as to debar us when we need 
Refreshment, whether food, or talk be- 
tween, 
Food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse 
Of looks and smiles; for smiles from reason 

flow 
To brute denied, and are of love the food — 
Love, not the lowest end of human life. 241 
For not to irksome toil, but to delight, 
He made us, and delight to reason joined. 



These paths and bowers doubt not but our 

joint hands 
Will keep from wilderness with ease, as 

wide 
As we need walk, till younger hands ere 

long 
Assist us. But, if much converse perhaps 
Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield; 
For solitude sometimes is best society, 249 
And short retirement urges sweet return. 
But other doubt possesses me, lest harm 
Befall thee, severed from me; for thou 

know'st 
What hath been warned us — what mali- 
cious foe, 
Envying our happiness, and of his own 
Despairing, seeks to work us woe and 

shame 
By sly assault, and somewhere nigh at 

hand 
Watches, no doubt, with greedy hope to 

find 
His wish and best advantage, us asunder, 
Hopeless to circumvent us joined, where 

each 
To other speedy aid might lend at need. 260 
Whether his first design be to withdraw 
Our fealty from God, or to disturb 
Conjugal love — than which perhaps no 

bliss 
Enjoyed by us excites his envy more — 
Or this, or worse, leave not the faithful 

side 
That gave thee being, still shades thee and 

protects. 
The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks, 
Safest and seemliest by her husband stays, 
Who guards her, or with her the worst en- 
dures." 
To whom the virgin majesty of Eve, 270 
As one who loves, and some unkindness 

meets, 
With sweet austere composure thus re- 
plied : — 
" Offspring of Heaven and Earth, and all 
Earth's lord ! 
That such an Enemy we have, who seeks 
Our ruin, both by thee informed I learn, 
And from the parting Angel overheard, 
As in a shady nook I stood behind, 
Just then returned at shut of evening flow- 
ers. 
But that thou shouldst my firmness there- 
fore doubt 
To God or thee, because we have a foe 280 



198 



PARADISE LOST 



May tempt it, I expected not to hear. 
His violence thou fear'st not, being such 
As we, not capable of death or pain, 
Can either not receive, or can repel. 
His fraud is, then, thy fear; which plain 

infers 
Thy equal fear that my firm faith and love 
Can by his fraud be shaken or seduced: 
Thoughts, which how found they harbour 

in thy breast, 
Adam! misthought of her to thee so dear ? " 
To whom, with healing words, Adam re- 
plied: — 290 
" Daughter of God and Man, immortal 

Eve! — 
For such thou art, from sin and blame en- 
tire — 
Not diffident of thee do I dissuade 
Thy absence from my sight, but to avoid 
The attempt itself, intended by our Foe. 
For he who tempts, though in vain, at least 

asperses 
The tempted with dishonour foul, supposed 
Not incorruptible of faith, not proof 
Against temptation. Thou thyself with 

scorn 
And anger wouldst resent the offered 
wrong, 300 

Though ineffectual found; misdeem not, 

then, 
If such affront I labour to avert 
From thee alone, which on us both at once 
The enemy, though bold, will hardly dare; 
Or, daring, first on me the assault shall 

light. 
Nor thou his malice and false guile con- 
temn — 
Subtle he needs must be who could seduce 
Angels — nor think superfluous others' aid. 
I from the influence of thy looks receive 
Access in every virtue — in thy sight 310 
More wise, more watchful, stronger, if need 

were 
Of outward strength; while shame, thou 

looking on, 
Shame to be overcome or overreached, 
Would utmost vigour raise, and raised 

unite. 
Why shouldst not thou like sense within 

thee feel 
When I am present, and thy trial choose 
With me, best witness of thy virtue tried ? " 

So spake domestic Adam in his care 
And matrimonial love; but Eve, who 
thought 



Less attributed to her faith sincere, 320 

Thus her reply with accent sweet re- 
newed: — 
" If this be our condition, thus to dwell 
In narrow circuit straitened by a Foe, 
Subtle or violent, we not endued 
Single with like defence wherever met, 
How are we happy, still in fear of harm ? 
But harm precedes not sin: only our Foe 
Tempting affronts us with his foul esteem 
Of our integrity: his foul esteem 
Sticks no dishonour on our front, but turns 
Foul on himself; then wherefore shunned 
or feared 33 i 

By us, who rather double honour gain 
From his surmise proved false, find peace 

within, 
Favour from Heaven, our witness, from the 

event ? 
And what is faith, love, virtue, unassayed 
Alone, without exterior help sustained ? 
Let us not then suspect our happy state 
Left so imperfet by the Maker wise 
As not secure to single or combined. 
Frail is our happiness, if this be so; 340 

And Eden were no Eden, thus exposed." 

To whom thus Adam fervently replied: — 
" O Woman, best are all things as the will 
Of God ordained them; his creating hand 
Nothing imperfet or deficient left 
Of all that he created — much less Man, 
Or aught that might his happy state se- 
cure, 
Secure from outward force. Within him- 
self 
The danger lies, yet lies within his power; 
Against his will he can receive no harm. 350 
But God left free the Will; for what obeys 
Reason is free; and Reason he made right, 
But bid her well be ware, and still erect, 
Lest, by some fair appearing good sur- 
prised, 
She dictate false, and misinform the Will 
To do what God expressly hath forbid. 
Not then mistrust, but tender love, enjoins 
That I should mind thee oft; and mind 

thou me. 
Firm we subsist, yet possible to swerve, 
Since Reason not impossibly may meet 360 
Some specious object by the foe suborned, 
And fall into deception unaware, 
Not keeping strictest watch, as she was 

warned. 
Seek not temptation, then, which to avoid 
Were better, and most likely if from me 



BOOK NINTH 



199 



Thou sever not: trial will corne unsought. 
Wouldst thou approve thy constancy, ap- 
prove 
First thy obedience; the other who can 

know, 
Not seeing thee attempted, who attest ? 
But, if thou think trial unsought may find 
Us both securer than thus warned thou 
seem'st, 371 

Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee 

more. 
Go in thy native innocence; rely 
On what thou hast of virtue; summon all; 
For God towards thee hath done his part: 
do thine." 
So spake the Patriarch of Mankind; but 
Eve 
Persisted; yet submiss, though last, re- 
plied: — 
" With thy permission, then, and thus 
forewarned, 
Chiefly by what thy own last reasoning 

words 
Touched only, that our trial, when least 
sought, 380 

May find us both perhaps far less prepared, 
The willinger I go, nor much expect 
A Foe so proud will first the weaker seek; 
So bent, the more shall shame him his re- 
pulse." 
Thus saying, from her husband's hand 
her hand 
Soft she withdrew, and, like a wood-nymph 

light, 
Oread or Dryad, or of Delia's train, 
Betook her to the groves, but Delia's self 
In gait surpassed and goddess-like deport, 
Though not as she with bow and quiver 
armed, 390 

But with such gardening tools as Art, yet 

rude, 
Guiltless of fire had formed, or Angels 

brought. 
To Pales, or Pomona, thus adorned, 
Likest she seemed — Pomona when she 

fled 
Vertumnus — or to Ceres in her prime, 
Yet virgin of Proserpina from Jove. 
Her long with ardent look his eye pursued 
Delighted, but desiring more her stay. 
Oft he to her his charge of quick return 
Repeated; she to him as oft engaged 400 
To be returned by noon amid the bower, 
And all things in best order to invite 
Noontide repast, or afternoon's repose. 



O much deceived, much failing, hapless 

Eve, 
Of thy presumed return ! event perverse ! 
Thou never from that hour in Paradise 
Found'st either sweet repast or sound re- 
pose; 
Such ambush, hid among sweet flowers and 

shades, 
Waited, with hellish rancour imminent, 
To intercept thy way, or send thee back 410 
Despoiled of innocence, of faith, of bliss. 
For now, and since first break of dawn, the 

Fiend, 
Mere Serpent in appearance, forth was 

come, 
And on his quest where likeliest he might 

find 
The only two of mankind, but in them 
The whole included race, his purposed prey. 
In bower and field he sought, where any 

tuft 
Of grove or garden-plot more pleasant lay, 
Their tendance or plantation for delight; 
By fountain or by shady rivulet 420 

He sought them both, but wished his hap 

might find 
Eve separate; he wished, but not with hope 
Of what so seldom chanced, when to his 

wish, 
Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies, 
Veiled in a cloud of fragrance, where she 

stood, 
Half-spied, so thick the roses bushing round 
About her glowed, oft stooping to support 
Each flower of tender stalk, whose head, 

though gay 
Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with 

gold, 
Hung drooping unsustained. Them she 

upstays 430 

Gently with myrtle band, mindless the 

while 
Herself, though fairest unsupported flower, 
From her best prop so far, and storm so 

nigh. 
Nearer he drew, and many a walk tra- 
versed 
Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm ; 
Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen 
Among thick- woven arborets, and flowers 
Imbordered on each bank, the hand of Eve : 
Spot more delicious than those gardens 

feigned 
Or of revived Adonis, or renowned 440 

Alcinoiis, host of old Laertes' son, 



200 



PARADISE LOST 



Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king 
Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian 

spouse. 
Much he the place admired, the person 

more. 
As one who, long in populous city pent, 
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the 

air, 
Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to 

breathe 
Among the pleasant villages and farms 
Adjoined, from each thing met conceives 

delight — 449 

The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine, 
Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural 

sound — 
If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin 

pass, 
What pleasing seemed for her now pleases 

more, 
She most, and in her look sums all delight: 
Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold 
This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve 
Thus early, thus alone. Her heavenly form 
Angelic, but more soft and feminine, 
Her graceful innocence, her every air 
Of gesture or least action, overawed 460 
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved 
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought. 
That space the Evil One abstracted stood 
From his own evil, and for the time re- 
mained 
Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, 
Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge. 
But the hot hell that always in him burns, 
Though in mid Heaven, soon ended his de- 
light, 
And tortures him now more, the more he 

sees 
Of pleasure not for him ordained. Then 

soon 470 

Fierce hate he recollects, and all his 

thoughts 
Of mischief, gratulating, thus excites: — 
" Thoughts, whither have ye led me ? 

with what sweet 
Compulsion thus transported to forget 
What hither brought us ? hate, not love, 

nor hope 
Of Paradise for Hell, hope here to taste 
Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy, 
Save what is in destroying; other joy 478 
To me is lost. Then let me not let pass 
Occasion which now smiles. Behold alone 
The Woman, opportune to all attempts — 



Her husband, for I view far round, not nigh, 
Whose higher intellectual more I shun, 
And strength, of courage haughty, and of 

limb 
Heroic built, though of terrestrial mould ; 
Foe not informidable, exempt from 

wound — 
I not; so much hath Hell debased, and pain 
Infeebled me, to what I was in Heaven. 
She fair, divinely fair, fit love for Gods, 
Not terrible, though terror be in love, 49 o 
And beauty, not approached by stronger 

hate, 
Hate stronger under show of love well 

feigned — 
The way which to her ruin now I tend." 
So spake the Enemy of Mankind, en- 
closed 
In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve 
Addressed his way — not with indented 

wave, 
Prone on the ground, as since, but on his 

rear, 
Circular base of rising folds, that towered 
Fold above fold, a surging maze; his head 
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; 500 
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect 
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass 
Floated redundant. Pleasing was his shape 
And lovely; never since of serpent kind 
Lovelier — not those that in Illyria changed 
Hermione and Cadmus, or the God 
In Epidaurus; nor to which transformed 
Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline, was seen, 
He with Olympias, this with her who bore 
Scipio, the highth of Rome. With tract 

oblique 5 10 

At first, as one who sought access but 

feared 
To interrupt, sidelong he works his way. 
As when a ship, by skilful steersman 

wrought 
Nigh river's mouth or foreland, where the 

wind 
Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her 

sail, 
So varied he, and of his tortuous train 
Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of 

Eve, 
To lure her eye. She, busied, heard the 

sound 
Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as used 
To such disport before her through the 

field 520 

From every beast, more duteous at her call 



BOOK NINTH 



20I 



Than at Circean call the herd disguised. 
He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood, 
But as in gaze admiring. Oft he bowed 
His turret crest and sleek enamelled neck, 
Fawning, and licked the ground whereon 

she trod. 
His gentle dumb expression turned at 

length 
The eye of Eve to mark his play; he, glad 
Of her attention gained, with serpent- 
tongue 
Organic, or impulse of vocal air, 530 

His fraudulent temptation thus began: — 
" Wonder not, sovran mistress (if per- 
haps 
Thou canst who art sole wonder), much less 

arm 
Thy looks, the heaven of mildness, with 

disdain, 
Displeased that I approach thee thus, and 

gaze 
Insatiate, I thus single, nor have feared 
Thy awful brow, more awful thus retired. 
Fairest resemblance of thy Maker fair, 
Thee all things living gaze on, all things 

thine 

By gift, and thy celestial beauty adore, 540 
With ravishment beheld — there best be- 
held 

Where universally admired. But here, 
In this enclosure wild, these beasts among, 
Beholders rude, and shallow to discern 
Half what in thee is fair, one man except, 
Who sees thee (and what is one ?) who 

shouldst be seen 
A Goddess among Gods, adored and served 
By Angels numberless, thy daily train ? ' ' 
So glozed the Tempter, and his proem 
tuned. 549 

»Into the heart of Eve his words made way, 
Though at the voice much marvelling; at 
length, 
Not unamazed, she thus in answer spake: — 
" What may this mean ? Language of 
Man pronounced 
By tongue of brute, and human sense ex- 
pressed ! 
The first at least of these I thought denied 
To beasts, whom God on their creation-day 
Created mute to all articulate sound; 
The latter I demur, for in their looks 
Much reason, and in their actions, oft ap- 
pears. 
Thee, Serpent, subtlest beast of all the 
field 560 



I knew, but not with human voice endued; 
Redouble, then, this miracle, and say, 
How cam'st thou speakable of mute, and 

how 
To me so friendly grown above the rest 
Of brutal kind that daily are in sight: 
Say, for such wonder claims attention due." 
To whom the guileful Tempter thus re- 
plied: — 
" Empress of this fair World, resplendent 

Eve! 
Easy to me it is to tell thee all 
What thou command'st, and right thou 
shouldst be obeyed. 570 

I was at first as other beasts that graze 
The trodden herb, of abject thoughts and 

low, 
As was my food, nor aught but food dis- 
cerned 
Or sex, and apprehended nothing high: 
Till on a day, roving the field, I chanced 
A goodly tree far distant to behold, 
Loaden with fruit of fairest colours mixed, 
Buddy and gold. I nearer drew to gaze; 
When from the boughs a savoury odour 

blown, 
Grateful to appetite, more pleased my 
sense 5S0 

Than smell of sweetest fennel, or the teats 
Of ewe or goat dropping with milk at even, 
Unsucked of lamb or kid, that tend their 

play. 
To satisfy the sharp desire I had 
Of tasting those fair Apples, I resolved 
Not to defer; hunger and thirst at once, 
Powerful persuaders, quickened at the scent 
Of that alluring fruit, urged me so keen. 
About the mossy trunk I wound me soon; 
For, high from ground, the branches would 
require 590 

Thy utmost reach, or Adam's: round the 

Tree 
All other beasts that saw, with like desire 
Longing and envying stood, but could not 

reach. 
Amid the tree now got, where plenty hung 
Tempting so nigh, to pluck and eat my fill 
I spared not; for such pleasure till that 

hour 
At feed or fountain never had I found. 
Sated at length, ere long I might perceive 
Strange alteration in me, to degree s 99 

Of Reason in my inward powers, and Speech 
Wanted not long, though to this shape re- 
tained. 



PARADISE LOST 



Thenceforth to speculations high or deep 
I turned my thoughts, and with capacious 

mind 
Considered all things visible in Heaven, 
Or Earth, or Middle, all things fair and 

good. 
But all that fair and good in thy divine 
Semblance, and in thy beauty's heavenly 

ray, 
United I beheld — no fair to thine 
Equivalent or second; which compelled 609 
Me thus, though importune perhaps, to 

come 
And gaze, and worship thee of right de- 
clared 
Sovran of creatures, universal Dame ! " 
So talked the spirited slv Snake; and 
Eve, 
Yet more amazed, unwary thus replied: — 
"Serpent, thy overpraising leaves in 
doubt 
The virtue of that Fruit, in thee first 

proved. 
But say, where grows the Tree ? from 

hence how far ? 
For many are the trees of God that grow 
In Paradise, and various, yet unknown 619 
To us; in such abundance lies our choice 
As leaves a greater store of fruit untouched, 
Still hanging incorruptible, till men 
Grow up to their provision, and more hands 
Help to disburden Nature of her hearth." 
To whom the wily Adder, blithe and 
glad; — 
" Empress, the way is ready, and not long — 
Beyond a row of myrtles, on a flat, 
Fast by a fountain, one small thicket past 
Of blowing myrrh and balm. If thou ac- 
cept 629 
My conduct, I can bring thee thither soon." 
"Lead, then," said Eve. He, leading, 
swiftly rowled 
In tangles, and made intricate seem straight, 
To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and joy 
Brightens his crest. As when a wandering 

fire, 
Compact of unctuous vapour, which the 

night 
Condenses, and the cold invirons round, 
Kindled through agitation to a flame 
(Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit at- 
tends), 
Hovering and blazing with delusive light, 
Misleads the amazed night-wanderer from 
his way 640 



To bogs and mires, and oft through pond 

or pool, 
There swallowed up and lost, from succour 

far : 
So glistered the dire Snake, and into fraud 
Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the Tree 
Of Prohibition, root of all our woe ; 
Which when she saw, thus to her guide she 
spake : — 
" Serpent, we might have spared our 
coming hither, 
Fruitless to me, though fruit be here to 

excess, 
The credit of whose virtue rest with thee — 
Wondrous, indeed, if cause of such ef- 
fects ! 650 
But of this tree we may not taste nor 

touch ; 
God so commanded, and left that command 
Sole daughter of his voice : the rest, we live 
Law to ourselves; our Reason is our Law." 
To whom the Tempter guilefully re- 
plied: — 
" Indeed ! Hath God then said that of the 

fruit 
Of all these garden-trees ye shall not eat, 
Yet lords declared of all in Earth or Air ? " 
To whom thus Eve, yet sinless : — "Of 
the fruit 
Of each tree in the garden we may eat; 660 
But of the fruit of this fair Tree, amidst 
The Garden, God hath said, ' Ye shall not 

eat 
Thereof, nor shall ye touch it, lest ye die.' " 
She scarce had said, though brief, when 
now more bold 
The Tempter, but, with shew of zeal and 

love 
To Man, and indignation at his wrong, 
New part puts on, and, as to passion moved, 
Fluctuates disturbed, yet comely, and in 

act 
Raised, as of some great matter to begin. 
As when of old some orator renowned 679 
In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence 
Flourished, since mute, to some great cause 

addressed, 
Stood in himself collected, while each part, 
Motion, each act, won audience ere the 

tongue 
Sometimes in highth began, as no delay 
Of preface brooking through his zeal of 

right : 
So standing, moving, or to highth up- 
grown, 



BOOK NINTH 



203 



The Tempter, all impassioned, thus be- 
gan:— 
' O sacred, wise, and wisdom-giving Plant, 
Mother of science ! now I feel thy power 
Within me clear, not only to discern 681 
Things in their causes, but to trace the ways 
Of highest agents, deemed however wise. 
Queen of this Universe ! do not believe 
Those rigid threats of death. Ye shall not 

die. 
How should ye ? By the Fruit ? it gives 

you life 
To knowledge. By the Threatener ? look 

on me, 
Me who have touched and tasted, yet both 

live, 
And life more perfet have attained than 

Fate 689 

Meant me, by ventring higher than my 

lot. 
Shall that be shut to Man which to the 

Beast 
Is open ? or will God incense his ire 
For such a petty trespass, and not praise 
Rather your dauntless virtue, whom the 

pain 
Of death denounced, whatever thing Death 

be, 
Deterred not from achieving what might 

lead 
To happier life, knowledge of Good and 

Evil ? 
Of good, how just! of evil — if what is evil 
Be real, why not known, since easier 

shunned ? 699 

God, therefore, cannot hurt ye, and be just; 
Not just, not God; not feared then, nor 

obeyed: 
Your fear itself of death removes the fear. 
Why, then, was this forbid ? Why but to 

awe, 
Why but to keep ye low and ignorant, 
His worshipers ? He knows that in the 

day 
Ye eat thereof your eyes, that seem so 

clear, 
Yet are but dim, shall perfetly be then 
Opened and cleared, and ye shall be as 

Gods, 
Knowing both good and evil, as they know. 
That ye should be as Gods, since I as 

Man, 710 

Internal Man, is but proportion meet — 
I, of brute, human; ye, of human, Gods. 
So ye shall die perhaps, by putting off 



Human, to put on Gods — death to be 

wished, 
Though threatened, which no worse than 

this can bring ! 
And what are Gods, that Man may not 

become 
As they, participating godlike food ? 
The Gods are first, and that advantage use 
On our belief, that all from them proceeds. 
I question it; for this fair Earth I see, 720 
Warmed by the Sun, producing every kind ; 
Them nothing. If they all things, who 

enclosed 
Knowledge of Good and Evil in this Tree, 
That whoso eats thereof forthwith attains 
Wisdom without their leave ? and wherein 

lies 
The offence, that Man should thus attain 

to know ? 
What can your knowledge hurt him, or 

this Tree 
Impart against his will, if all be his ? 
Or is it envy ? and can envy dwell 
In Heavenly breasts ? These, these and 

many more 73 o 

Causes import your need of this fair Fruit. 
Goddess humane, reach, then, and freely 

taste ! " 
He ended; and his words, replete with 

guile, 
Into her heart too easy entrance won. 
Fixed on the Fruit she gazed, which to 

behold 
Might tempt alone; and in her ears the 

sound 
Yet rung of his persuasive words, im- 

pregned 
With reason, to her seeming, and with truth. 
Meanwhile the hour of noon drew on, and 

waked 
An eager appetite, raised by the smell 740 
So savoury of that Fruit, which with desire, 
Inclinable now grown to touch or taste, 
Solicited her longing eye; yet first, 
Pausing a while, thus to herself she 

mused : — 
" Great are thy virtues, doubtless, best of 

Fruits, 
Though kept from Man, and worthy to be 

admired, 
Whose taste, too long forborne, at first 

assay 
Gave elocution to the mute, and taught 
The tongue not made for speech to speak 

thy praise. 



204 



PARADISE LOST 



Thy praise he also who forbids thy use 750 
Conceals not from us, naming thee the Tree 
Of Knowledge, knowledge both of Good 

and Evil; 
Forbids us then to taste. But his forbid- 
ding 
Commends thee more, while it infers the 

good 
By thee communicated, and our want; 
For good unknown sure is not had, or, had 
And yet unknown, is as not had at all. 
In plain, then, what forbids he but to know ? 
Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise ! 759 
Such prohibitions bind not. But, if Death 
Bind us with after-bands, what profits then 
Our inward freedom ? In the day we eat 
Of this fair Fruit, our doom is we shall die ! 
How dies the Serpent ? He hath eaten, 

and lives, 
And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and 

discerns, 
Irrational till then. For us alone 
Was death invented ? or to us denied 
This intellectual food, for beasts reserved ? 
For beasts it seems; yet that one beast 

which first 
Hath tasted envies not, but brings with 

joy 770 

The good befallen him, author unsuspect, 
Friendly to Man, far from deceit or guile. 
What fear I, then ? rather, what know to 

fear 
Under this ignorance of Good and Evil, 
Of God or Death, of law or penalty ? 
Here grows the cure of all, this Fruit di- 
vine, 
Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste, 
Of virtue to make wise. What hinders, 

then, 
To reach, and feed at once both body and 

mind ? " 
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour 780 
Forth-reaching to the Fruit, she plucked, 

she eat. 
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her 

seat, 
Sighing through all her works, gave signs 

of woe 
That all was lost. Back to the thicket 

slunk 
The guilty Serpent, and well might, for 

Eve, 
Intent now only on her taste, naught else 
Regarded; such delight till then, as seemed, 
In fruit she never tasted, whether true, 



Or fancied so through expectation high 
Of knowledge; nor was Godhead from her 
thought. 790 

Greedily she ingorged without restraint, 
And knew not eating death. Satiate at 

length, 
And hightened as with wine, jocond and 

boon, 
Thus to herself she pleasingly began : — 

" O sovran, virtuous, precious of all trees 
In Paradise ! of operation blest 
To sapience, hitherto obscured, infamed, 
And thy fair Fruit let hang, as to no end 
Created ! but henceforth my early care, 
Not without song, each morning, and due 
praise, 800 

Shall tend thee, and the fertil burden ease 
Of thy full branches, offered free to all; 
Till, dieted by thee, I grow mature 
In knowledge, as the Gods who all things 

know. 
Though others envy what they cannot 

give - 
For, had the gift been theirs, it had not 

here 
Thus grown ! Experience, next to thee I 

owe, 
Best guide: not following thee, I had re- 
mained 
In ignorance; thou open'st Wisdom's way, 
And giv'st access, though secret she re- 
tire. 810 
And I perhaps am secret: Heaven is high — 
High, and remote to see from thence dis- 
tinct 
Each thing on Earth; and other care per- 
haps 
May have diverted from continual watch 
Our great Forbidder, safe with all his Spies 
About him. But to Adam in what sort 
Shall I appear ? Shall I to him make 

known 
As yet my change, and give him to partake 
Full happiness with me, or rather not, 
But keep the odds of knowledge in my 
power 820 

Without copartner ? so to add what wants 
In female sex, the more to draw his love, 
f And render me more equal, and perhaps — 
A thing not undesirable — sometime 
Superior; for, inferior, who is free ? 
This may be well; but what if God have 

seen, 
And death ensue ? Then I shall be no 






BOOK NINTH 



205 



And Adam, wedded to another Eve, 
Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct ! 
A death to think ! Confirmed, then, I re- 
solve 830 
Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe. 
So dear I love him that with him all deaths 
I could endure, without him live no life." 
So saying, from the Tree her step she 
turned, 
But first low reverence done, as to the 

Power 
That dwelt within, whose presence had in- 
fused 
Into the plant sciential sap, derived 
From nectar, drink of Gods. Adam the 

while, 
Waiting desirous her return, had wove 
Of choicest flowers a garland, to adorn 840 
Her tresses, and her rural labours crown, 
As reapers oft are wont their harvest- 
queen. 
Great joy he promised to his thoughts, and 

new 
Solace in her return, so long delayed; 
Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill, 
Misgave him. He the faltering measure 

felt, 
And forth to meet her went, the way she 

took 
That morn when first they parted. By the 

Tree 
Of Knowledge he must pass; there he her 

met, 
Scarce from the Tree returning; in her 
hand 850 

A bough of fairest fruit, that downy smiled, 
New gathered, and ambrosial smell dif- 
fused. 
To him she hasted; in her face excuse 
Came prologue, and apology to prompt, 
Which, with bland words at will, she thus 
addressed: — 
" Hast thou not wondered, Adam, at my 
stay? 
Thee I have missed, and thought it long, 

deprived 
Thy presence — agony of love till now 
Not felt, nor shall be twice; for never 

more 

Mean I to try, what rash untried I sought, 

The pain of absence from thy sight. But 

strange 861 

Hath been the cause, and wonderful to 

hear. 
This Tree is not, as we are told, a Tree 



Of danger tasted, nor to evil unknown 

Opening the way, but of divine effect 

To open eyes, and make them Gods who 

taste ; 
And hath been tasted such. The Serpent 

wise, 
Or not restrained as we, or not obeying, 
Hath eaten of the Fruit, and is become 
Not dead, as we are threatened, but thence- 
forth 870 
Endued with human voice and human sense, 
Reasoning to admiration, and with me 
Persuasively hath so prevailed that I 
Have also tasted, and have also found 
The effects to correspond — opener mine 

eyes, 
Dim erst, dilated spirits, ampler heart, 
And growing up to Godhead; which for 

thee 
Chiefly I sought, without thee can despise. 
For bliss, as thou hast part, to me is bliss; 
Tedious, unshared with thee, and odious 
soon. 880 

Thou, therefore, also taste, that equal lot 
May join us, equal joy, as equal love; 
Lest, thou not tasting, different degree 
Disjoin us, and I then too late renounce 
Deity for thee, when fate will not permit." 
Thus Eve with countenance blithe her 
story told; 
But in her cheek distemper flushing glowed. 
On the other side, Adam, soon as he heard 
The fatal trespass done by Eve, amazed, 
Astonied stood and blank, while horror 
chill 890 

Ran through his veins, and all his joints 

relaxed. 
From his slack hand the garland wreathed 

for Eve 
Down dropt, and all the faded roses shed. 
Speechless he stood and pale, till thus at 

length 
First to himself he inward silence broke: — 

" O fairest of Creation, last and best 
Of all God's works, creature in whom ex- 
celled 
Whatever can to sight or thought be 

formed, 
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet ! 
How art thou lost ! how on a sudden lost, 
Defaced, deflowered, and now to death de- 
vote ! 901 
Rather, how hast thou yielded to trans- 
gress 
The strict forbiddauce, how to violate 



2 06 



PARADISE LOST 



The sacred Fruit forbidden ? Some cursed 

fraud 
Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown, 
And me with thee hath ruined; for with 

thee 
Certain my resolution is to die. 
How can I live without thee ? how forgo 
Thy sweet converse, and love so dearly 

joined, 
To live again in these wild woods forlorn ? 
Should God create another Eve, and I 911 
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee 
Would never from my heart. No, no ! I 

feel 
The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh, 
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy 

state 
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe." 
So having said, as one from sad dismay 
Recomforted, and, after thoughts disturbed, 
Submitting to what seemed remediless, 
Thus in calm mood his words to Eve he 

turned : — 920 

" Bold deed thou hast presumed, adven- 

trous Eve, 
And peril great provoked, who thus hast 

dared 
Had it been only coveting to eye 
That sacred Food, sacred to abstinence ; 
Much more to taste it, under ban to touch. 
But past who can recall, or done undo ? 
Not God Omnipotent, nor Fate ! Yet so 
Perhaps thou shalt not die; perhaps the 

fact 
Is not so hainous now — foretasted Fruit, 
Profaned first by the Serpent, by him 

first 
Made common and unhallowed ere our 

taste, 931 

Nor yet on him found deadly. He yet 

lives — 
Lives, as thou saidst, and gains to live, as 

Man, 
Higher degree of life : inducement strong 
To us, as likely, tasting, to attain 
Proportional ascent; which cannot be 
But to be Gods, or Angels, Demi-gods. 
Nor can I think that God, Creator wise, 
Though threatening, will in earnest so de- 
stroy 
Us, his prime creatures, dignified so high, 
Set over all his works ; which, in our fall, 
For us created, needs with us must fail, 942 
Dependent made. So God shall uncreate, 
Be frustrate, do, undo, and labour lose — 



Not well conceived of God; who, though 

his power 
Creation could repeat, yet would be loth 
Us to abolish, lest the Adversary 
Triumph and say: ' Fickle their state whom 

God 
Most favours; who can please him long ? 

Me first 
He ruined, now Mankind; whom will he 

next ? ' — 950 

Matter of scorn not to be given the Foe. 
However, I with thee have fixed my lot, 
Certain to undergo like doom. If death 
Consort with thee, death is to me as life ; 
So forcible within my heart I feel 
The bond of Nature draw me to my own — 
My own in thee ; for what thou art is mine. 
Our state cannot be severed; we are one, 
One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself." 
So Adam ; and thus Eve to him re- 
plied : — 960 
" O glorious trial of exceeding love, 
Illustrious evidence, example high ! 
Ingaging me to emulate; but, short 
Of thy perfection, how shall I attain, 
Adam ? from whose dear side I boast me 

sprung, 
And gladly of our union hear thee speak, 
One heart, one soul in both; whereof good 

proof 
This day affords, declaring thee resolved, 
Rather than death, or aught than death 

more dread, 
Shall separate us, linked in love so dear, 97 o 
To undergo with me one guilt, one crime, 
If any be, of tasting this fair Fruit; 
Whose virtue (for of good still good pro- 
ceeds, 
Direct, or by occasion) hath presented 
This happy trial of thy love, which else 
So eminently never had been known. 
Were it I thought death menaced would 

ensue 
This my attempt, I would sustain alone 
The worst, and not persuade thee — rather 

die 
Deserted than oblige thee with a fact 980 
Pernicious to thy peace, chiefly assured 
Remarkably so late of thy so true, 
So faithful love unequalled. But I feel 
Far otherwise the event — not death, but 

life 
Augmented, opened eyes, new hopes, new 

joys, 
Taste so divine that what of sweet before 



BOOK NINTH 



207 






Hath touched my sense flat seems to this 

and harsh. 
On my experience, Adam, freely taste, 
And fear of death deliver to the winds." 
So saying, she embraced him, and for 

joy _ 990 

Tenderly wept, much won that he his love 
Had so ennobled as of choice to incur 
Divine displeasure for her sake, or death. 
In recompense (for such compliance bad 
Such recompense best merits), from the 

bough 
She gave him of that fair enticing Fruit 
With liberal hand. He scrupled not to eat, 
Against his better knowledge, not deceived, 
But fondly overcome with female charm. 
Earth trembled from her entrails, as 

again 1000 

In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan ; 
Sky loured, and, muttering thunder, some 

sad drops 
Wept at completing of the mortal Sin 
Original; while Adam took no thought, 
Eating his fill, nor Eve to iterate 
Her former trespass feared, the more to 

soothe 
Him with her loved society; that now, 
As with new wine intoxicated both, 
They swim in mirth, and fancy that they 

feel 
Divinity within them breeding wings 1010 
Wherewith to scorn the Earth. But that 

false Fruit 
Far other operation first displayed, 
Carnal desire inflaming. He on Eve 
Began to cast lascivious eyes ; she him 
As wantonly repaid; in lust they burn, 
Till Adam thus 'gan Eve to dalliance 

move : — 
" Eve, now I see thou art exact of taste 
And elegant — of sapience no small part; 
Since to each meaning savour we apply, 
And palate call judicious. I the praise 1020 
Yield thee; so well this day thou hast pur- 
veyed. 
Much pleasure we have lost, while we ab- 
stained 
From this delightful Fruit, nor known till 

now 
True relish, tasting. If such pleasure be 
In things to us forbidden, it might be 

wished 
For this one Tree had been forbidden ten. 
But come; so well refreshed, now let us 

play, 



As meet is, after such delicious fare ; 
For never did thy beauty, since the day 
I saw thee first and wedded thee, 
adorned 1030 

With all perfections, so enflame my sense 
With ardour to enjoy thee, fairer now 
Than ever — bounty of this virtuous Tree ! " 
So said he, and forbore not glance or toy 
Of amorous intent, well understood 
Of Eve, whose eye darted contagious fire. 
Her hand he seized, and to a shady bank, 
Thick overhead with verdant roof imbow- 

ered, 
He led her, nothing loth; flowers were the 

couch, 
Pansies, and violets, and asphodel, 1040 

And hyacinth — Earth's freshest, softest 

lap. 
There they their fill of love and love's dis- 
port 
Took largely, of their mutual guilt the seal, 
The solace of their sin, till dewy sleep 
Oppressed them, wearied with their amo- 
rous play. 
Soon as the force of that fallacious Fruit, 
That with exhilarating vapour bland 
About their spirits had played, and inmost 

powers 
Made err, was now exhaled, and grosser 

sleep, 
Bred of unkindly fumes, with conscious 
dreams 1050 

Incumbered, now had left them, up they 

rose 
As from unrest, and, each the other view- 
ing, 
Soon found their eyes how opened, and 

their minds 
How darkened. Innocence, that as a veil 
Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was 

gone; 
Just confidence, and native righteousness, 
And honour, from about them, naked left 
To guilty Shame: he covered, but his robe 
Uncovered more. So rose the Danite strong, 
Herculean Samson, from the harlot-lap 1060 
Of Philistean Dalilah, and waked 
Shorn of his strength; they destitute and 

bare 
Of all their virtue. Silent, and in face 
Confounded, long they sat, as strucken mute ; 
Till Adam, though not less than Eve 

abashed, 
At length gave utterance to these words 
constrained: — 



208 



PARADISE LOST 



" O Eve, in evil hour thou didst give ear 
To that false Worm, of whomsoever taught 
To counterfeit Man's voice — true in our 

fall, 
False in our promised rising; since our 
eyes 1070 

Opened we find indeed, and find we know 
Both good and evil, good lost and evil got: 
Bad Fruit of Knowledge, if this be to know, 
Which leaves us naked thus, of honour void, 
Of innocence, of faith, of purity, 
Our wonted ornaments now soiled and 

stained, 
And in our faces evident the signs 
Of foul concupiscence; whence evil store, 
Even shame, the last of evils; of the first 
Be sure then. How shall I behold the 
face 1080 

Henceforth of God or Angel, erst with joy 
And rapture so oft beheld ? Those Hea- 
venly Shapes 
Will dazzle now this earthly with their 

blaze 
Insufferably bright. Oh, might I here 
In solitude live savage, in some glade 
Obscured, where highest woods, impenetra- 
ble 
To star or sunlight, spread their umbrage 

broad, 
And brown as evening ! Cover me, ye 

pines ! 
Ye cedars, with innumerable boughs 
Hide me, where I may never see them 
more ! 1090 

But let us now, as in bad plight, devise 
What best may, for the present, serve to 

hide 
The parts of each from other that seem 

most 
To shame obnoxious, and unseemliest seen — 
Some tree, whose broad smooth leaves, to- 
gether sewed, 
And girded on our loins, may cover round 
Those middle parts, that this new comer, 

Shame, 
There sit not, and reproach us as unclean." 
So counselled he, and both together went 
Into the thickest wood. There soon they 
chose 1 100 

The fig-tree — not that kind for fruit re- 
nowned, 
But such as, at this day, to Indians known, 
In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms 
Braunching so broad and long that in the 
ground 



The bended twigs take root, and daughters 

grow 
About the mother tree, a pillared shade 
High overarched, and echoing walks be- 
tween: 
There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning 

heat, 
Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing 

herds 
At loop-holes cut through thickest shade. 

Those leaves mo 

They gathered, broad as Amazonian targe, 
And with what skill they had together 

sewed, 
To gird their waist — vain covering, if to 

hide 
Their guilt and dreaded shame ! O how 

unlike 
To that first naked glory ! Such of late 
Columbus found the American, so girt 
With feathered cincture, naked else and 

wild, 
Among the trees on isles and woody shores. 
Thus fenced, and, as they thought, their 

shame in part 
Covered, but not at rest or ease of mind, 1 120 
They sat them down to weep. Nor only 

tears 
Rained at their eyes, but high winds worse 

within 
Began to rise, high passions — anger, hate, 
Mistrust, suspicion, discord — and shook 

sore 
Their inward state of mind, calm region 

once 
And full of peace, now tost and turbulent: 
For Understanding ruled not, and the Will 
Heard not her lore, both in subjection 

now 
To sensual Appetite, who, from beneath 
Usurping over sovran Reason, claimed 1 130 
Superior sway. From thus distempered 

breast 
Adam, estranged in look and altered style, 
Speech intermitted thus to Eve renewed: — 
" Would thou hadst hearkened to my 

words, and stayed 
With me, as I besought thee, when that 

strange 
Desire of wandering, this unhappy morn, 
I know not whence possessed thee ! We 

had then 
Remained still happy — not, as now, de- 
spoiled 
Of all our good, shamed, naked, miserable! 



BOOK TENTH 



209 



Let none henceforth seek needless cause to 

approve 1 140 

The faith they owe; when earnestly they 

seek 
Such proof, conclude they then begin to 

fail." 
To whom, soon moved with touch of 

blame, thus Eve : — 
" What words have passed thy lips, Adam 

severe ? 
Imput'st thou that to my default, or will 
Of wandering, as thou call'st it, which who 

knows 
But might as ill have happened thou being 

by, 

Or to thyself perhaps ? Hadst thou been 
there, 

Or here the attempt, thou couldst not have 
discerned 

Fraud in the Serpent, speaking as he 
spake; 1150 

No ground of enmity between us known 

Why he should mean me ill or seek to 
harm. 

Was I to have never parted from thy side ? 

As good have grown there still, a lifeless 
rib. 

Being as I am, why didst not thou, the 
Head, 

Command me absolutely not to go, 

Going into such danger, as thou saidst ? 

Too facile then, thou didst not much gain- 
say, 

Nay, didst permit, approve, and fair dis- 
miss. 

Hadst thou been firm and fixed in thy dis- 
sent, 1 160 



Neither had I transgressed, nor thou with 
me." 
To whom, then first incensed, Adam re- 
plied: — 
" Is this the love, is this the recompense 
Of mine to thee, ingrateful Eve, expressed 
Immutable when thou wert lost, not I — 
Who might have lived, and joyed immortal 

bliss, 
Yet willingly chose rather death with thee ? 
And am I now upbraided as the cause 
Of thy transgressing ? not enough severe, 
It seems, in thy restraint ! What could I 
more ? n 7o 

I warned thee, I admonished thee, foretold 
The danger, and the lurking Enemy 
That lay in wait; beyond this had been 

force, 
And force upon free will hath here no place. 
But confidence then bore thee on, secure 
Either to meet no danger, or to find 
Matter of glorious trial; and perhaps 
I also erred in overmuch admiring 
What seemed in thee so perfet that I 

thought 
No evil durst attempt thee. But I rue 1180 
That error now, which is become my crime, 
And thou the accuser. Thus it shall befall 
Him who, to worth in women overtrusting, 
Lets her will rule: restraint she will not 

brook; 
And, left to herself, if evil thence ensue, 
She first his weak indulgence will accuse." 

Thus they in mutual accusation spent 
The fruitless hours, but neither self-con- 
demning; 
And of their vain contest' appeared no end. 



BOOK X 



THE ARGUMENT 



Man's transgression known, the guardian Angels for- 
sake Paradise, and return up to Heaven to approve 
their vigilance, and are approved; God declaring that 
the entrance of Satan could not be by them prevented. 
He sends his Son to judge the Transgressors; who de- 
scends, and gives sentence accordingly; then, in pity, 
clothes them both, and reascends. Sin and Death, sit- 
ting till then at the gates of Hell, by wondrous sympa- 
thy feeling the success of Satan in this new World, and 
the sin by Man there committed, resolve to sit no 
longer confined in Hell, but to follow Satan, their sire, 
up to the place of Man : to make the way easier from 
Hell to this World to and fro, they pave a broad high- 
way or bridge over Chaos, according to the track that 
Satan first made ; then, preparing for Earth, they meet 
him, proud of his success, returning to Hell; their mu- 



tual gratulation. Satan arrives at Pandemonium ; in 
full assembly relates, with boasting, his success against 
Man; instead of applause is entertained with a general 
hiss by all his audience, transformed, with himself also, 
suddenly into Serpents, according to his doom given 
in Paradise; then, deluded with a shew of the For- 
bidden Tree springing up before them, they, greedily 
reaching to take of the Fruit, chew dust and bitter 
ashes. The proceedings of Sin and Death : God fore- 
tells the final victory of his Son over them, and the re- 
newing of all things; but, for the present, commands 
his Angels to make several alterations in the Heavens 
and Elements. Adam, more and more perceiving his 
fallen condition, heavily bewails, rejects the condole- 
ment of Eve; she persists, and at length appeases him: 
then, to evade the curse likely to fall on their off- 
spring, proposes to Adam violent ways; which he ap- 
proves not, but, conceiving better hope, puts her in 
mind of the late promise made them, that her seed 
should be revenged on the Serpent, and exhorts her, 
with him, to seek peace of the offended Deity by re- 
pentance and supplication. 



PARADISE LOST 



Meanwhile the hainous and despiteful 

act 
Of Satan done in Paradise, and how 
He, in the Serpent, had perverted Eve, 
Her husband she, to taste the fatal Fruit, 
Was known in Heaven ; for what can scape 

the eye 
Of God all-seeing, or deceive his heart 
Omniscient ? who, in all things wise and 

just, 
Hindered not Satan to attempt the mind 
Of Man, with strength entire and free will 

armed 
Complete to have discovered and repulsed 
Whatever wiles of foe or seeming friend, n 
For still they knew, and ought to have still 

remembered, 
The high injunction not to taste that Fruit, 
Whoever tempted ; which they not obeying 
Incurred (what could they less ?) the 

penalty, 
And, manifold in sin, deserved to fall. 
Up into Heaven from Paradise in haste 
The Angelic Guards ascended, mute and 

sad 

For Man ; for of his state by this they knew, 

Much wondering how the subtle Fiend had 

stolen 20 

Entrance unseen. Soon as the unwelcome 

news 
From Earth arrived at Heaven-gate, dis- 
pleased 
All were who heard; dim sadness did not 

spare 
That time celestial visages, yet, mixed 
With pity, violated not their bliss. 
About the new-arrived in multitudes, 
The Ethereal People ran, to hear and k low 
How all befell. They towards the Throne 

supreme, 
Accountable, made haste, to make appear, 
With righteous plea, their utmost vigilance, 
And easily approved ; when the Most High, 
Eternal Father, from his secret Cloud 32 
Amidst, in thunder uttered thus his voice : — 
" Assembled Angels, and ye Powers re- 
turned 
From unsuccessful charge, be not dismayed 
Nor troubled at these tidings from the 

Earth, 
Which your sincerest care could not pre- 
vent, 
Foretold so lately what would come to pass, 
When first this Tempter crossed the gulf 
from Hell. 39 



I told ye then he should prevail, and speed 
On his bad errand — Man should be se- 
duced, 
And flattered out of all, believing lies 
Against his Maker; no decree of mine, 
Concurring to necessitate his fall, 
Or touch with lightest moment of impulse 
His free will, to her own inclining left 
In even scale. But fallen he is; and now 
What rests, but that the mortal sentence 

pass 
On his transgression, Death denounced 

that day ? 
Which he presumes already vain and void, 
Because not yet inflicted, as he feared, 51 
By some immediate stroke, but soon shall 

find 
Forbearance no acquittance ere day end. 
Justice shall not return, as bounty, scorned. 
But whom send I to judge them ? whom 

but thee, 
Vicegerent Son ? To thee I have trans- 
ferred 
All judgment, whether in Heaven, or Earth, 

or Hell. 
Easy it may be seen that I intend 
Mercy colleague with justice, sending thee, 
Man's Friend, his Mediator, his designed 60 
Both Ransom and Redeemer voluntary, 
And destined Man himself to judge Man 

fallen." 
So spake the Father; and, unfolding 

bright 
Toward the right hand his glory, on the 

Son 
Blazed forth unclouded deity. He full 
Resplendent all his Father manifest 
Expressed, and thus divinely answered 

mild : — 
"Father Eternal, thine is to decree; 
Mine both in Heaven and Earth to do thy 

will 69 

Supreme, that thou in me, thy Son beloved, 
May'st ever rest well pleased. I go to 

judge 
On Earth these thy transgressors ; but thou 

know'st, 
Whoever judged, the worst on me must 

light, 
When time shall be; for so I undertook 
Before thee, and, not repenting, this obtain 
Of .right, that I may mitigate their doom 
On me derived. Yet I shall temper so 
Justice with mercy as may illustrate most 
Them fully satisfied, and thee appease. 



BOOK TENTH 



211 



Attendance none shall need, nor train, 
where none 80 

Are to behold the judgment but the judged, 
Those two; the third best absent is con- 
demned, 
Convict by flight, and rebel to all law; 
Conviction to the Serpent none belongs." 
Thus saying, from his radiant Seat he 
rose 
Of high collateral glory. Him Thrones and 

Powers, 
Princedoms, and Dominations ministrant, 
Accompanied to Heaven-gate, from whence 
Eden and all the coast in prospect lay. 
Down he descended straight; the speed of 
Gods 90 

Time counts not, though with swiftest min- 
utes winged. 
Now was the Sun in western cadence low 
From noon, and gentle airs due at their 

hour 
To fan the Earth now waked, and usher in 
The evening cool, when he, from wrauth 

more cool, 
Came, the mild Judge and Intercessor both, 
To sentence Man. The voice of God they 

heard 
Now walking in the Garden, by soft winds 
Brought to their ears, while day declined; 

they heard, 
And from his presence hid themselves 
among 
ickes 
God, 

Approaching, thus to Adam called aloud: — 
" Where art thou, Adam, wont with joy 
to meet 
My coming, seen far off ? I miss thee 

here, 
Not pleased thus entertained, with solitude, 
Where obvious duty erewhile appeared 

unsought. 
Or come I less conspicuous, or what change 
Absents thee, or what chance detains ? 
Come forth ! " 
He came, and with him Eve, more loth, 
though first 
To offend, discountenanced both, and dis- 
composed, no 
Love was not in their looks, either to God 
Or to each other, but apparent guilt, 
And shame, and perturbation, and despair, 
Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile. 
Whence Adam, faltering long, thus an- 
swered brief: — 



" I heard thee in the Garden, and, of thy 
voice 
Afraid, being naked, hid myself." To 

whom 
The gracious Judge, without revile, re- 
plied : — 
" My voice thou oft hast heard, and hast 
not feared, 
But still rejoiced; how is it now become 120 
So dreadful to thee ? That thou art naked 

who 
Hath told thee ? Hast thou eaten of the 

Tree 
Whereof I gave thee charge thou shouldst 

not eat ? " 
To whom thus Adam, sore beset, replied: — 
" O Heaven ! in evil strait this day I 
stand 
Before my Judge — either to undergo 
Myself the total crime, or to accuse 
My other self, the partner of my life, 
Whose failing, while her faith to me re- 
mains, 129 
I should conceal, and not expose to blame 
By my complaint. But strict necessity 
Subdues me, and calamitous constraint, 
Lest on my head both sin and punishment, 
However insupportable, be all 
Devolved ; though, should I hold my peace, 

yet thou 
Wouldst easily detect what I conceal. 
This Woman, whom thou mad'st to be my 

help, 
And gav'st me as thy perfet gift, so good, 
So fit, so acceptable, so divine, 
That from her hand I could suspect no 
ill, 140 

And what she did, whatever in itself, 
Her doing seemed to justify the deed — 
She gave me of the Tree, and I did eat." 
To whom the Sovran Presence thus re- 
plied : — 
" Was she thy God, that her thou didst 
obey 
Before his voice ? or was she made thy 

guide, 
Superior, or but equal, that to her 
Thou didst resign thy manhood, and the 

place 
Wherein God set thee above her, made of 
thee 149 

And for thee, whose perfection far excelled 
Hers in all real dignity ? Adorned 
She was indeed, and lovely, to attract 
Thy love, not thy subjection; and her gifts 



212 



PARADISE LOST 



Were such as under government well 

seemed — 
Unseemly to bear rule ; which was thy part 
And person, hadst thou known thyself 
aright." 
So having said, he thus to Eve in few: — 
" Say, Woman, what is this which thou 
hast done ? " 
To whom sad Eve, with shame nigh over- 
whelmed, 159 
Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge 
Bold or loquacious, thus abashed replied: — 
" The Serpent me beguiled, and I did eat." 
Which when the Lord God heard, with- 
out delay 
To judgment he proceeded on the accused 
Serpent, though brute, unable to transfer 
The guilt on him who made him instru- 
ment 
Of mischief, and polluted from the end 
Of his creation — justly then accursed, 
As vitiated in nature. More to know 
Concerned not Man (since he no further 
knew), 170 
Nor altered his offence; yet God at last 
To Satan, first in sin, his doom applied, 
Though in mysterious terms, judged as 

then best; 
And on the Serpent thus his curse let 
fall: — 
" Because thou hast done this, thou art 
accursed 
Above all cattle, each beast of the field; 
Upon thy belly grovelling thou shalt go, 
And dust shalt eat all the days of thy life. 
Between thee and the Woman I will put 
Enmity, and between thine and her seed; 
Her seed shall bruise thy head, thou bruise 
his heel." 181 

So spake this oracle — then verified 
When Jesus, son of Mary, second Eve, 
Saw Satan fall like lightning down from 

Heaven, 
Prince of the Air; then, rising from his 

grave, 
Spoiled Principalities and Powers, tri- 
umphed 
In open shew, and, with ascension bright, 
Captivity led captive through the Air, 
The realm itself of Satan, long usurped, 
Whom He shall tread at last under our 
feet, 190 

Even He who now foretold his fatal bruise, 
And to the Woman thus his sentence 
turned: — 



" Thy sorrow I will greatly multiply 
By thy conception; children thou shalt 

bring 
In sorrow forth, and to thy husband's will 
Thine shall submit; he over thee shall 
rule." 
On Adam last thus judgment he pro- 
nounced: — 
" Because thou hast hearkened to the voice 

of thy wife, 
And eaten of the Tree concerning which 
I charged thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat 
thereof, 200 

Curs'd is the ground for thy sake; thou in 

sorrow 
Shalt eat thereof all the days of thy life ; 
Thorns also and thistles it shall bring thee 

forth 
Unbid; and thou shalt eat the herb of the 

field; 
In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat 

bread, 
Till thou return unto the ground; for thou 
Out of the ground wast taken: know thy 

birth, 
For dust thou art, and shalt to dust re- 
turn." 
So judged he Man, both Judge and Sa- 
viour sent, 
And the instant stroke of death, denounced 
that day, 210 

Removed far off; then, pitying how they 

stood 
Before him naked to the air, that now 
Must suffer change, disdained not to begin 
Thenceforth the form of servant to assume. 
As when he washed his servants' feet, so 

now, 
As Father of his family, he clad 
Their nakedness with skins of beasts, or 

slain, 
Or, as the snake, with youthful coat repaid; 
And thought not much to clothe his ene- 
mies. 
Nor he their outward only with the skins 
Of beasts, but inward nakedness, much 
more 221 

Opprobrious,with his robe of righteousness 
Arraying, covered from his Father's sight. 
To him with swift ascent he up returned, 
Into his blissful bosom reassumed 
In glory as of old; to him, appeased, 
All, though all-knowing, what had passed 

with Man 
Recounted, mixing intercession sweet. 



BOOK TENTH 



Meanwhile, ere thus was sinned and 

judged on Earth, 
Within the gates of Hell sat Sin and 

Death, 230 

In counterview within the gates, that now 
Stood open wide, belching outrageous flame 
Far into Chaos, since the Fiend passed 

through, 
Sin opening; who thus now to Death be- 
gan:— 
"O Son, why sit we here, each other 

viewing 
Idly, while Satan, our great author, thrives 
In other worlds, and happier seat provides 
For us, his offspring dear ? It cannot be 
But that success attends him; if mishap, 
Ere this he had returned, with fury driven 
By his Avengers, since no place like this 
Can fit his punishment, or their revenge. 
Methinks I feel new strength within me 

rise, 243 

Wings growing, and dominion given me 

large 
Beyond this Deep — whatever draws me 

on, 
Or sympathy, or some connatural force, 
Powerful at greatest distance to unite 
With secret amity things of like kind 
By secretest conveyance. Thou, my shade 
Inseparable, must with me along; 250 

For Death from Sin no power can sepa- 
rate. 
But, lest the difficulty of passing back 
Stay his return perhaps over this gulf 
Impassable, impervious, let us try 
(Adventrous work, yet to thy power and 

mine 
Not unagreeable !) to found a path 
Over this Main from Hell to that new 

World 
Where Satan now prevails — a monument 
Of merit high to all the infernal Host, 259 
Easing their passage hence, for intercourse 
Or transmigration, as their lot shall lead. 
Nor can I miss the way, so strongly drawn 
By this new-felt attraction and instinct." 
Whom thus the meagre Shadow answered 

soon: — 
" Go whither fate and inclination strong 
Leads thee; I shall not lag behind, nor 

err 
The way, thou leading: such a scent I draw 
Of carnage, prey innumerable, and taste 
The savour of death from all things there 

that live. 



Nor shall I to the work thou enterprise st 
Be wanting, but afford thee equal aid." 271 
So saying, with delight he snuffed the 

smell 
Of mortal change on Earth. As when a 

flock 
Of ravenous fowl, though many a league 

remote, 
Against the day of battle, to a field 
Where armies lie encamped come flying, 

lured 
With scent of living carcases designed 
For death the following day in bloody 

fight; 
So scented the grim Feature, and upturned 
His nostril wide into the murky air, 280 
Sagacious of his quarry from so far. 
Then both, from out Hell-gates, into the 

waste 
Wide anarchy of Chaos, damp and dark, 
Flew diverse, and, with power (their power 

was great) 
Hovering upon the waters, what they met 
Solid or slimy, as in raging sea 
Tossed up and down, together crowded 

drove, 
From each side shoaling, towards the mouth 

of Hell; 
As when two polar winds, blowing adverse 
Upon the Cronian sea, together drive 290 
Mountains of ice, that stop the imagined 

way 
Beyond Petsora eastward to the rich 
Cathaian coast. The aggregated soil 
Death with his mace petrific, cold and dry, 
As with a trident smote, and fixed as firm 
As Delos, floating once; the rest his look 
Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move, 
And with asphaltic slime ; broad as the gate, 
Deep to the roots of Hell the gathered 

beach 
They fastened, and the mole immense 

wraught on 300 

Over the foaming Deep high-arched, a 

bridge 
Of length prodigious, joining to the wall 
Immovable of this now fenceless World, 
Forfeit to Death — from hence a passage 

broad, 
Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to Hell. 
So, if great things to small may be com- 
pared, 
Xerxes, the liberty of Greece to yoke, 
From Susa, his Memnonian palace high, 
Came to the sea, and, over Hellespont 



214 



PARADISE LOST 



Bridging his way, Europe with Asia 
joined, 310 

And scourged with many a stroke the in- 
dignant waves. 
Now had they brought the work by won- 
drous art 
Pontifical — a ridge of pendent rock 
Over the vexed Abyss, following the track 
Of Satan, to the self-same place where he 
First lighted from his wing and landed safe 
From out of Chaos — to the outside bare 
Of this round World. With pins of ada- 
mant 
And chains they made all fast, too fast 

they made 
And durable ; and now in little space 320 
The confines met of empyrean Heaven 
And of this World, and on the left hand 

Hell, 
With long reach interposed; three several 

ways 
In sight to each of these three places led. 
And now their way to Earth they had de- 
scried, 
To Paradise first tending, when, behold 
Satan, in likeness of an Angel bright, 
Betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion steer- 
ing 
His zenith, while the Sun in Aries rose ! 
Disguised he came; but those his children 
dear 33 o 

Their parent soon discerned, though in 

disguise. 
He, after Eve seduced, unminded slunk 
Into the wood fast by, and, changing shape 
To observe the sequel, saw his guileful act 
By Eve, though all unweeting, seconded 
Upon her husband — saw their shame that 

sought 
Vain covertures; but, when he saw descend 
The Son of God to judge them, terrified 
He fled, not hoping to escape, but shun 
The present — fearing, guilty, what his 
wrauth 340 

Might suddenly inflict; that past, returned 
By night, and, listening where the hapless 

pair 
Sat in their sad discourse and various plaint, 
Thence gathered his own doom; which un- 
derstood 
Not instant, but of future time, with joy 
And tidings fraught, to Hell he now re- 
turned, 
And at the brink of Chaos, near the foot 
Of this new wondrous pontifice, unhoped 



Met who to meet him came, his offspring 
dear. 

Great joy was at their meeting, and at 
sight _ 350 

Of that stupendious bridge his joy encreased. 

Long he admiring stood, till Sin, his fair 

Inchanting daughter, thus the silence 
broke : — 
" O Parent, these are thy magnific deeds, 

Thy trophies ! which thou view'st as not 
thine own; 

Thou art their Author and prime Archi- 
tect. 

For I no sooner in my heart divined 

(My heart, which by a secret harmony 

Still moves with thine, joined in connexion 
sweet) 

That thou on Earth hadst prospered, which 
thy looks 360 

Now also evidence, but straight I felt — 

Though distant from thee worlds between, 
yet felt — 

That I must after thee with this thy son; 

Such fatal consequence unites us three. 

Hell could no longer hold us in her bounds, 

Nor this unvoyageable gulf obscure 

Detain from following thy illustrious track. 

Thou hast achieved our liberty, confined 

Within Hell-gates till now; thou us im- 
powered 

To fortify thus far, and overlay 370 

With this portentous bridge the dark Abyss. 

Thine now is all this World ; thy virtue 
hath won 

What thy hands builded not; thy wisdom 
gained, 

With odds, what war hath lost, and fully 
avenged 

Our foil in Heaven. Here thou shalt Mon- 
arch reign, 

There didst not; there let him still victor 
sway, 

As battle hath adjudged, from this new 
World 

Retiring, by his own doom alienated, 

And henceforth monarchy with thee divide 

Of all things, parted by the empyreal 
bounds, 380 

His quadrature, from thy orbicular World, 

Or try thee now more dangerous to his 
Throne." 
Whom thus the Prince of Darkness an- 
swered glad: — 

" Fair daughter, and thou, son and grand- 
child both, 



BOOK TENTH 






High proof ye now have given to be the 

race 
Of Satan (for I glory in the name, 
Antagonist of Heaven's Almighty King), 
Amply have merited of me, of all 
The Infernal Empire, that so near Heaven's 

door 
Triumphal with triumphal act have met, 390 
Mine with this glorious work, and made one 

realm 
Hell and this World — one realm, one con- 
tinent 
Of easy thoroughfare. Therefore, while I 
Descend through Darkness, on your road 

with ease, 
To my associate Powers, them to acquaint 
With these successes, and with them re- 
joice, 
You two this way, among these numerous 

orbs, 
All yours, right down to Paradise descend; 
There dwell, and reign in bliss; thence on 

the Earth 
Dominion exercise and in the air, 400 

Chiefly on Man, sole lord of all declared; 
Him first make sure your thrall, and lastly 

kill. 
My substitutes I send ye, and create 
Plenipotent on Earth, of matchless might 
Issuing from me. On your joint vigour now 
My hold of this new kingdom all depends, 
Through Sin to Death exposed by my ex- 
ploit. 
If your joint power prevail, the affairs of 

Hell 
No detriment need fear; go, and be strong." 
So saying, he dismissed them ; they with 
speed 410 

Their course through thickest constella- 
tions held, 
Spreading their bane; the blasted stars 

looked wan, 
And planets, planet-strook, real eclipse 
Then suffered. The other way Satan went 

down 
The causey to Hell-gate ; on either side 
Disparted Chaos overbuilt exclaimed, 
And with rebounding surge the bars assailed, 
That scorned his indignation. Through the 

gate, 
Wide open and unguarded, Satan passed, 
And all about found desolate; for those 420 
Appointed to sit there had left their charge, 
Flown to the upper World ; the rest were all 
Far to the inland retired, about the walls 



Of Pandemonium, city and proud seat 
Of Lucifer, so by allusion called 
Of that bright star to Satan paragoned. 
There kept their watch the legions, while 

the Grand 
In council sat, solicitous what chance 
Might intercept their Emperor sent; so he 
Departing gave command, and they ob- 
served. 430 
As when the Tartar from his Russian foe, 
By Astracan, over the snowy plains, 
Retires, or Bactrian Sophi, from the horns 
Of Turkish crescent, leaves all waste be- 
yond 
The realm of Aladule, in his retreat 
To Tauris or Casbeen; so these, the late 
Heaven-banished host, left desert utmost 

Hell 
Many a dark league, reduced in careful 

watch 
Round their Metropolis, and now expecting 
Each hour their great Adventurer from the 

search 44 o 

Of foreign worlds. He through the midst 

unmarked, 
In shew plebeian Angel militant 
Of lowest order, passed, and, from the door 
Of that Plutonian hall, invisible 
Ascended his high Throne, which, under 

state 
Of richest texture spread, at the upper end 
Was placed in regal lustre. Down a while 
He sat, and round about him saw, unseen. 
At last, as from a cloud, his fulgent head 
And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter, 

clad 450 

With what permissive glory since his fall 
Was left him, or false glitter. All amazed 
At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng 
Bent their aspect, and whom they wished 

beheld, 
Their mighty Chief returned: loud was the 

acclaim. 
Forth rushed in haste the great consulting 

Peers, 
Raised from their dark Divan, and with 

like joy 
Congratulant approached him, who with 

hand 
Silence, and with these words attention, 

won: — 
" Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, 

Virtues, Powers ! — 460 

For in possession such, not only of right, 
I call ye, and declare ye now, returned, 



2l6 



PARADISE LOST 



Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth 
Triumphant out of this infernal Pit 
Abominable, accursed, the house of woe, 
And dungeon of our tyrant ! Now possess, 
As lords, a spacious World, to our native 

Heaven 
Little inferior, by my adventure hard 
With peril great achieved. Long were to 

tell 
What I have done, what suffered, with 
what pain 470 

Voyaged the unreal, vast, unbounded Deep 
Of horrible confusion — over which 
By Sin and Death a broad way now is paved, 
To expedite your glorious march ; but I 
Toiled out my uncouth passage, forced to 

ride 
The untractable Abyss, plunged in the 

womb 
Of unoriginal Night and Chaos wild, 
That, jealous of their secrets, fiercely op- 
posed 
My journey strange, with clamorous up- 
roar 
Protesting Fate supreme; thence how I 
found 480 

The new-created World, which fame in 

Heaven 
Long had foretold, a fabric wonderful, 
Of absolute perfection; therein Man 
Placed in a paradise, by our exile 
Made happy. Him by fraud I have se- 
duced 
From his Creator, and, the more to increase 
Your wonder, with an apple ! He, thereat 
Offended — worth your laughter ! — hath 

given up 
Both his beloved Man and all his World 
To Sin and Death a prey, and so to us, 490 
Without our hazard, labour, or alarm, 
To range in, and to dwell, and over Man 
To rule, as over all he should have ruled. 
True is, me also he hath judged; or rather 
Me not, but the brute Serpent, in whose 



Man I deceived. That which to me be- 
longs 

Is enmity, which he will put between 

Me and Mankind: I am to bruise his heel; 

His seed — when is not set — shall bruise 
my head ! 

A world who would not purchase with a 
bruise, 500 

Or much more grievous pain ? Ye have 
the account 



Of my performance; what remains, ye 

Gods, 
But up and enter now into full bliss ? " 
So having said, a while he stood, expect- 
ing 
Their universal shout and high applause 
To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears, 
On all sides, from innumerable tongues 
A dismal universal hiss, the sound 
Of public scorn. He wondered, but not 

long 
Had leisure, wondering at himself now 
more. 5 <o 

His visage drawn he felt to sharp and 

spare, 
His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwin- 
ing 
Each other, till, supplanted, down he fell, 
A monstrous serpent on his belly prone, 
Reluctant, but in vain; a greater power 
Now ruled him, punished in the shape he 

sinned, 
According to his doom. He would have 

spoke, 
But hiss for hiss returned with forked 

tongue 
To forked tongue ; for now were all trans- 
formed 
Alike, to serpents all, as accessories 520 
To his bold riot. Dreadful was the din 
Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarm- 
ing now 
With complicated monsters, head and tail— 
Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbsena dire, 
Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Ellops drear, 
And Dipsas (not so thick swarmed once the 

soil 
Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle 
Ophiusa) ; but still greatest the midst, 
Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the 

Sun 
Ingendered in the Pythian vale on slime, 
Huge Python; and his power no less he 
seemed 531 

Above the rest still to retain. They all 
Him followed, issuing forth to the open 

field, 
Where all yet left of that revolted rout, 
Heaven-fallen, in station stood or just ar- 
ray, 
Sublime with expectation when to see 
In triumph issuing forth their glorious 

Chief. 
They saw, but other sight instead — a 
crowd 






BOOK TENTH 



217 



Of ugly serpents ! Horror on them fell, 
And. horrid sympathy; for what they saw 
They felt themselves now changing. Down 

their arms, 541 

Down fell both spear and shield; down 

they as fast, 
And the dire hiss renewed, and the dire form 
Catched by contagion, like in punishment 
As in their crime. Thus was the applause 

they meant 
Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame 
Cast on themselves from their own mouths. 

There stood 
A grove hard by, sprung up with this their 

change, 
His will who reigns above, to aggravate 
Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like 

that 550 

Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve 
Used by the Tempter. On that prospect 

strange 
Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining 
For one forbidden tree a multitude 
Now risen, to work them furder woe or 

shame; 
Yet, parched with scalding thirst and 

hunger fierce, 
Though to delude them sent, could not ab- 
stain, 
But on they rowled in heaps, and, up the 

trees 
Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks 
That curled Megsera. Greedily they plucked 
The fruitage fair to sight, like that which 

grew 561 

Near that bituminous lake where Sodom 

flamed ; 
This, more delusive, not the touch, but 

taste 
Deceived; they, fondly thinking to allay 
Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit 
Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended 

taste 
With spattering noise rejected. Oft they 

assayed, 
Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged 

as oft, 
With hatef ulest disrelish writhed their jaws 
With soot and cinders filled ; so oft they 

fell 570 

Into the same illusion, not as Man 
Whom they triumphed' once lapsed. Thus 

were they plagued, 
And, worn with famine, long and ceaseless 

hiss, 



Till their lost shape, permitted, they re- 
sumed — 
Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo 
This annual humbling certain numbered 

days, 
To dash their pride, and joy for Man se- 
duced. 
However, some tradition they dispersed 
Among the Heathen of their purchase got, 
And fabled how the Serpent, whom they 
called 580 

Ophion, with Eurynome (the wide- 
Encroaching Eve perhaps), had first the rule 
Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven 
And Ops, ere yet Dictaean Jove was born. 
Meanwhile in Paradise the Hellish pair 
Too soon arrived — Sin, there in power be- 
fore 

Once actual, now in body, and to dwell 
Habitual habitant; behind her Death, 
Close following pace for pace, not mounted 

yet 
On his pale horse; to whom Sin thus be- 
gan:— 59 o 
" Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering 
Death ! 
What think'st thou of our empire now ? 

though earned 
With travail difficult, not better far 
Than still at Hell's dark threshold to have 

sat watch, 
Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half- 
starved ? " 
Whom thus the Sin-born Monster an- 
swered soon: — 
" To me, who with eternal famine pine, 
Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven — 
There best where most with ravin I may 

meet: 
Which here, though plenteous, all too little 
seems 600 

To stuff this maw, this vast unhide-bound 
corpse." 
To whom the incestuous Mother thus re- 
plied: — 
" Thou, therefore, on these herbs, and 

fruits, and flowers, 
Feed first ; on each beast next, and fish, and 

fowl — 
No homely morsels; and whatever thing 
The scythe of Time mows down devour 

unspared ; 
Till I, in Man residing through the race, 
His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all 
infect, 



1 



2l8 



PARADISE LOST 



And season him thy last and sweetest 

prey." 
This said, they both betook them several 

ways, 610 

Both to destroy, or unimmortal make 
All kinds, and for destruction to mature 
Sooner or later; which the Almighty see- 
ing* 
From his transcendent Seat the Saints 

among, 
To those bright Orders uttered thus his 

voice : — 
" See with what heat these dogs of Hell 

advance 
To waste and havoc yonder World, which I 
So fair and good created, and had still 
Kept in that state, had not the folly of 

Man 619 

Let in these wasteful furies, who impute 
Folly to me (so doth the Prince of Hell 
And his adherents), that with so much 



I suffer them to enter and possess 

A place so heavenly, and, conniving, seem 

To gratify my scornful enemies, 

That laugh, as if, transported with some 

fit 
Of passion, I to them had quitted all, 
At random yielded up to their misrule; 
And know not that I called and drew them 

thither, 
My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and 

filth 630 

Which Man's polluting sin with taint hath 

shed 
On what was pure; till, crammed and 

gorged, nigh burst 
With sucked and glutted offal, at one 

sling 
Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son, 
Both Sin and Death, and yawning Grave, 

at last 
Through Chaos hurled, obstruct the mouth 

of Hell 
For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws. 
Then Heaven and Earth, renewed, shall be 

made pure 
To sanctity that shall receive no stain: 
Till then the curse pronounced on both 

precedes." 640 

He ended, and the Heavenly Audience 

loud 
Sung Halleluiah, as the sound of seas, 
Through multitude that sung: — "Just are 

thy ways, 



Righteous are thy decrees on all thy 

works ; 
Who can extenuate thee ? Next, to the 

Son, 
Destined restorer of Mankind, by whom 
New Heaven and Earth shall to the ages 

rise, 
Or down from Heaven descend." Such 

was their song, 
While the Creator, calling forth by name 
His mighty Angels, gave them several 

charge, 650 

As sorted best with present things. The 

Sun 
Had first his precept so to move, so shine, 
As might affect the Earth with cold and 

heat 
Scarce tolerable, and from the north to 

call 
Decrepit winter, from the south to bring 
Solstitial summer's heat. To the blanc 

Moon 
Her office they prescribed; to the other 

five 
Their planetary motions and aspects/ 
In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite, 
Of noxious efficacy, and when to join 660 
In synod unbenign; and taught the fixed 
Their influence malignant when to shower — 
Which of them, rising with the Sun or fall- 
ing, 
Should prove tempestuous. To the winds 

they set 
Their corners, when with bluster to con- 
found 
Sea, air, and shore; the thunder when to 

roll 
With terror through the dark aerial hall. 
Some say he bid his Angels turn askance 
The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and 

more 
From the Sun's axle; they with labour 

pushed 670 

Oblique the centric Globe: some say the 

Sun 
Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial 

road 
Like distant breadth — to Taurus with the 

seven 
Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins, 
Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amain 
By Leo, and the Virgin, and the Scales, 
As deep as Capricorn; to bring in change 
Of seasons to each clime. Else had the 

spring 



BOOK TENTH 



219 



Perpetual smiled on Earth with vernant 

flowers, 
Equal in days and nights, except to those 
Beyond the polar circles; to them day 681 
Had unbenighted shon, while the low Sun, 
To recompense his distance, in their sight 
Had rounded still the horizon, and not 

known 
Or east or west — which had forbid the 

snow 
From cold Estotiland, and south as far 
Beneath Magellan. At that tasted Fruit, 
The Sun, as from Thyestean banquet, turned 
His course iutended; else how had the 

world 689 

Inhabited, though sinless, more than now 
Avoided pinching cold and scorching heat ? 
These changes in the heavens, though slow, 

produced 
Like change on sea and land — sideral 

blast, 
Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot, 
Corrupt and pestilent. Now from the north 
Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore, 
Bursting their brazen dungeon, armed with 

ice, 
And snow, and hail, and stormy gust and 

flaw, 
Boreas and Csecias and Argestes loud 
And Thrascias rend the woods, and seas 

upturn; 700 

With adverse blasts upturns them from 

the south 
Notus and Afer, black with thundrous 

clouds 
From Serraliona; thwart of these, as fierce 
Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent 

winds, 
Eurus and Zephyr, with their lateral noise, 
Sirocco and Libecchio. Thus began 
Outrage from lifeless things; but Discord 

first, 
Daughter of Sin, among the irrational 
Death introduced through fierce antipathy. 
Beast now with beast 'gan war, and fowl 

with fowl, 710 

And fish with fish. To graze the herb all 

leaving 
Devoured each other; nor stood much in 

awe 
Of Man, but fled him, or with countenance 

grim 
Glared on him passing. These were from 

without 
The growing miseries; which Adam saw 



Already in part, though hid in gloomiest 

shade, 
To sorrow abandoned, but worse felt within, 
And, in a troubled sea of passion tost, 
Thus to disburden sought with sad com- 
plaint : — 
" O miserable of happy ! Is this the 
end 720 

Of this new glorious World, and me so late 
The glory of that glory ? who now, become 
Accursed of blessed, hide me from the face 
Of God, whom to behold was then my 

highth 
Of happiness ! Yet well, if here would 

end 
The misery ! I deserved it, and would 

bear 
My own deservings. But this will not 

serve : 
All that I eat or drink, or shall beget, 
Is propagated curse. O voice, once heard 
Delightfully, ' Encrease and multiply • ' 
Now death to hear ! for what can I en- 
crease 
Or multiply but curses on my head ? 
Who, of all ages to succeed, but, feeling 
The evil on him brought by me, will curse 
My head ? ' 111 fare our Ancestor impure ! 
For this we may thank Adam ! ' but his 

thanks 
Shall be the execration. So, besides 
Mine own that bide upon me, all from 

me 
Shall with a fierce reflux on me redound — 
On me, as on their natural centre, light; 740 
Heavy, though in their place. O fleeting 

j°ys 

Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes ! 
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay 
To mould me Man ? Did I solicit thee 
From darkness to promote me, or here 

place 
In this delicious Garden ? As my will 
Concurred not to my being, it were but 

right 
And equal to reduce me to my dust, 
Desirous to resign and render back 
All I received, unable to perforin 750 

Thy terms too hard, by which I was to 

hold 
The good I sought not. To the loss of that, 
Sufficient penalty, why hast thou added 
The sense of endless woes ? Inexplicable 
Thy justice seems. Yet, to say truth, too 

late 



220 



PARADISE LOST 



I thus contest; then should have been re- 
fused 
Those terms, whatever, when they were 

proposed. 
Thou didst accept them: wilt thou enjoy 

the good, 
Then cavil the conditions ? And, though 

God 
Made thee without thy leave, what if thy 

son 760 

Prove disobedient, and, reproved, retort, 
' Wherefore didst thou beget me ? I 

sought it not ! ' 
Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of 

thee 
That proud excuse ? yet him not thy elec- 
tion, 
But natural necessity, begot. 
God made thee of choice his own, and of 

his own 
To serve him ; thy reward was of his grace ; 
Thy punishment, then, justly is at his will. 
Be it so, for I submit; his doom is fair, 769 
That dust I am, and shall to dust return. 
O welcome hour whenever ! Why delays 
His hand to execute what his decree 
Fixed on this day ? Why do I overlive ? 
Why am I mocked with death, and length- 
ened out 
To deathless pain ? How gladly would I 

meet 
Mortality, my sentence, and be earth 
Insensible ! how glad would lay me down 
As in my mother's lap ! There I should 

rest, 
And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no 

more 
Would thunder in my ears; no fear of 

worse 780 

To me and to my offspring would torment 

me 
With cruel expectation. Yet one doubt 
Pursues me still — lest all I cannot die ; 
Lest that pure breath of life, the Spirit of 

Man 
Which God inspired, cannot together perish 
With this corporeal clod. Then, in the 

grave, 
Or in some other dismal place, who knows 
But I shall die a living death ? O thought 
Horrid, if true ! Yet why ? It was but 

breath 
Of life that sinned: what dies but what 

had life 79° 

And sin ? The body properly hath neither. 



All of me, then, shall die: let this appease 
The doubt, since human reach no further 

knows. 
For, though the Lord of all be infinite, 
Is his wrauth also ? Be it, Man is not so, 
But mortal doomed. How can he exercise 
Wrauth without end on Man, whom death 

must end ? 
Can he make deathless death ? That were 

to make 
Strange contradiction; which to God him- 
self 
Impossible is held, as argument 800 

Of weakness, not of power. Will he draw 

out, 
For anger's sake, finite to infinite 
In punished Man, to satisfy his rigour 
Satisfied never ? That were to extend 
His sentence beyond dust and Nature's law ; 
By which all causes else according still 
To the reception of their matter act, 
Not to the extent of their own sphere. 

But say 
That death be not one stroke, as I supposed, 
Bereaving sense, but endless misery 810 
From this day onward, which I feel begun 
Both in me and without me, and so last 

To perpetuity Ay me ! that fear 

Comes thundering back with dreadful revo- 
lution 
On my defenceless head ! Both Death 

and I 
Am found eternal, and incorporate both: 
Nor I on my part single ; in me all 
Posterity stands cursed. Fair patrimony 
That I must leave ye, sons " 

able 
To waste it all myself, and leave ye none ! 
So disinherited, how would ye bless 
Me, now your curse ! Ah, why should all 

Mankind, 
For one man's fault, thus guiltless be con- 
demned ? 
If guiltless ! But from me what can pro- 
ceed 
But all corrupt — both mind and will de- 
praved 
Not to do only, but to will the same 
With me ? How can they, then, acquitted 

stand 
In sight of God ? Him, after all disputes, 
Forced I absolve. All my evasions vain 
And reasonings, though through mazes, 
lead me still 830 

But to my own conviction: first and last 



Oh, were I 

819 






BOOK TENTH 



221 



So might the wrauth ! 



On me, me only, as the source and spring 
Of all corruption, all the blame lights due. 
Fond wish ! couldst 

thou support 
That burden, heavier than the Earth to 

bear — 
Than all the world much heavier, though 

divided 
With that bad Woman ? Thus, what thou 

desir'st, 
And what thou fear'st, alike destroys all 

hope 
Of refuge, and concludes thee miserable 
Beyond all past example and future' — 840 
To Satan only like, both crime and doom. 

Conscience ! into what abyss of fears 
And horrors hast thou driven me; out of 

which 

1 find no way, from deep to deeper 

plunged ! " 
Thus Adam to himself lamented loud 
Through the still night — not now, as ere 

Man fell, 
Wholesome and cool and mild, but with 

black air 
Accompanied, with clamps and dreadful 

gloom ; 
Which to his evil conscience represented 
All things with double terror. On the 

ground 850 

Outstretched he lay, on the cold ground, 

and oft 
Cursed his creation; Death as oft accused 
Of tardy execution, since denounced 
The day of his offence. " Why comes not 

Death," 
Said he, " with one thrice-acceptable stroke 
To end me ? Shall Truth fail to keep her 

word, 
Justice divine not hasten to be just ? 
But Death comes not at call ; Justice divine 
Mends not her slowest pace for prayers or 

cries. 
O woods, O fountains, hillocks, dales, and 

bowers ! 860 

With other echo late I taught your shades 
To answer, and resound far other song 
Whom thus afflicted when sad Eve behel 
Desolate where she sat, approaching nigh, 
Soft words to his fierce passion she as- 
sayed ; 
But her, with stern regard, he thus re- 
pelled : — 
" Out of my sight, thou Serpent ! That 

name best 



Befits thee, with him leagued, thyself as 

false 
And hateful: nothing wants, but that thy 

shape 
Like his, and colour serpentine, may shew 
Thy inward fraud, to warn all creatures 
from thee 871 

Henceforth, lest that too heavenly form, 

pretended 
To hellish falsehood, snare them. But for 

thee 
I had persisted happy, had not thy pride 
And wandering vanity, when least was safe, 
Rejected my forewarning, and disdained 
Not to be trusted — longing to be seen, 
Though by the Devil himself; him over- 
weening 
To overreach; but, with the Serpent meet- 
ing, 
Fooled and beguiled; by him thou, I by 
thee, 880 

To trust thee from my side, imagined wise, 
Constant, mature, proof against all as- 
saults, 
And understood not all was but a shew, 
Rather than solid virtue, all but a rib 
Crooked by nature — bent, as now appears, 
More to the part sinister — from me 

drawn; 
Well if thrown out, as supernumerary 
To my just number found ! Oh, why did 

God, 
Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven 
With Spirits masculine, create at last 890 
This novelty on Earth, this fair defect 
Of Nature, and not fill the World at once 
With men as Angels, without feminine ; ) 
Or find some other way to generate 
Mankind ? This mischief had not then 

befallen, 
And more that shall befall — innumerable 
Disturbances on Earth through female 

snares, 
And strait conjunction with this sex. For S 

either . . 

He never shall find out fit mate, but such 
As some misfortune brings him, or mis-M 
take : 900 J 

Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain, 
Through her perverseness, but shall see her 

gained 
By a far worse, or, if she love, withheld 
By parents; or his happiest choice too late 
Shall meet, already linked and wedlock- 
bound 



222 



PARADISE LOST 



To a fell adversary, his hate or shame: 
Which infinite calamity shall cause 
To human life, and household peace con- 
found." 
He added not, and from her turned; but 
Eve, 
Not so repulsed, with tears that ceased not 
flowing, 910 

And tresses all disordered, at his feet 
Fell humble, and, imbracing them, be- 
sought 
His peace, and thus proceeded in her 
plaint: — 
" Forsake me not thus, Adam ! witness 
Heaven 
What love sincere and reverence in my 

heart 
I bear thee, and unweeting have offended, 
Unhappily deceived ! Thy suppliant 
I beg, and clasp thy knees; bereave me 

not 
Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid, 
Thy counsel in this uttermost distress, 920 
My only strength and stay. Forlorn of 

thee, 
Whither shall I betake me, where subsist ? 
While yet we live, scarce one short hour 

perhaps, 
Between us two let there be peace; both 

joining, 
As joined in injuries, one enmity 
Against a Foe by doom express assigned 

us, 
That cruel Serpent. On me exercise not 
Thy hatred for this misery befallen — 
On me already lost, me than thyself 
More miserable. Both have sinned; but 
thou 930 

Against God only; I against God and thee, 
And to the place of judgment will return, 
There with my cries impor'tune Heaven, 

that all 
The sentence, from thy head removed, may 

light 
On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe, 
Me, me only, just object of His ire." 

She ended, weeping; and her lowly 
plight, 
Immovable till peace obtained from fault 
Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam 

wraught 
Commiseration. Soon his heart relented 
Towards her, his life so late, and sole de- 
light, 941 
Now at his feet submissive in distress — 



Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking, 
His counsel whom she had displeased, his 

aid. 
As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, 
And thus with peaceful words upraised her 
soon : — 
" Unwary, and too desirous, as before 
So now, of what thou know'st not, who 

desir'st 
The punishment all on thyself ! Alas ! 
Bear thine own first, ill able to sustain 950 
His full wrauth whose thou feel'st as yet 

least part, 
And my displeasure bear'st so ill. If 

prayers 
Could alter high decrees, I to that place 
Would speed before thee, and be louder 

heard, 
That on my head all might be visited, 
Thy frailty and infirmer sex forgiven, 
To me committed, and by me exposed. 
But rise; let us no more contend, nor 

blame 
Each other, blamed enough elsewhere, but 

strive 
In offices of love how we may lighten 960 
Each other's burden in our share of woe; 
Since this day's death denounced, if aught 

I see, 
Will prove no sudden, but a slow-paced 

evil, 
A long day's dying, to augment our pain, 
And to our seed (O hapless seed !) de- 
rived." 
To whom thus Eve, recovering heart, re- 
plied : — 
" Adam, by sad experiment I know 
How little weight my words with thee can 

find, 
Found so erroneous, thence by just event 
Found so unfortunate. Nevertheless, 970 
Restored by thee, vile as I am, to place 
Of new acceptance, hopeful to regain 
Thy love, the sole contentment of my 

heart, 
Living or dying from thee I will not hide 
What thoughts in my unquiet breast are 

risen, 
Tending to some relief of our extremes, 
Or end, though sharp and sad, yet toler- 
able, 
As in our evils, and of easier choice. 
If care of our descent perplex us most, 
Which must be born to certain woe, de- 
voured 980 



BOOK TENTH 



223 



By Death at last (and miserable it is 

To be to others cause of misery, 

Our own begotten, and of our loins to 

bring 
Into this cursed world a woeful race, 
That, after wretched life, must be at last 
Food for so foul a Monster), in thy power 
It lies, yet ere conception, to prevent 
The race unblest, to being yet unbegot. 
Childless thou art; childless remain. So 

Death 
Shall be deceived his glut, and with us 
two 990 

Be forced to satisfy his ravenous maw. 
But, if thou judge it hard and difficult, 
Conversing, looking, loving, to abstain 
From love's due rites, nuptial imbraces 

sweet, 
And with desire to languish without hope 
Before the present object languishing 
With like desire — which would be misery 
And torment less than none of what we 

dread — 
Then, both our selves and seed at once to . 

free 
From what we fear for both, let us make 
short ; 1000 

Let us seek Death, or, he not found, supply 
With our own hands his office on ourselves. 
Why stand we longer shivering under fears 
That shew no end but death, and have the 

power, 
Of many ways to die the shortest choosing, 
Destruction with destruction to destroy ? " 

She ended here, or vehement despair 
Broke off the rest; so much of death her 

thoughts 
Had entertained as dyed her cheeks with 

pale. 
But Adam, with such counsel nothing 
swayed, 1010 

To better hopes his more attentive mind 
Labouring had raised, and thus to Eve re- 
plied: — 
" Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure 
seems 
To argue in thee something more sublime 
And excellent than what thy mind con- 
temns: 
But self-destruction therefore sought re- 
futes 
That excellence thought in thee, and implies 
Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret 
For loss of life and pleasure overloved. 
Or, if thou covet death, as utmost end 1020 



Of misery, so thinking to evade 

The penalty pronounced, doubt not but 

God 
Hath wiselier armed his vengeful ire than 

so 
To be forestalled. Much more I fear lest 

death 
So snatched will not exempt us from the 

pain 
We are by doom to pay; rather such acts 
Of contumacy will provoke the Highest 
To make death in us live. Then let us 

seek 
Some safer resolution — which methinks 
I have in view, calling to mind with heed 
Part of our sentence, that thy seed shall 

bruise 103 1 

The Serpent's head. Piteous amends ! un- 
less 
Be meant whom I conjecture, our grand 

foe, 
i Satan, who in the Serpent hath contrived 
Against us this deceit. To crush his head 
Would be revenge indeed — which will be 

lost 
By death brought on ourselves, or childless 

days 
Resolved as thou proposest; so our foe 
Shall scape his punishment ordained, and 

we 1039 

Instead shall double ours upon our heads. 
No more be mentioned, then, of violence 
Against ourselves, and wilful barrenness 
That cuts us off from hope, and savours 

only 
Rancour and pride, impatience and despite, 
Reluctance against God and his just yoke 
Laid on our necks. Remember with what 

mild 
And gracious temper he both heard and 

judged, 
Without wrauth or reviling. We expected 
Immediate dissolution, which we thought 
Was meant by death that day; when, lo ! 

to thee 1050 

Pains only in child-bearing were foretold, 
And bringing forth, soon recompensed with 

j°y> 

Fruit of thy womb. On me the curse aslope 
Glanced on the ground. With labour I 

must earn 
My bread ; what harm ? Idleness had been 

worse; 
My labour will sustain me; and, lest cold 
Or heat should injure us, his timely care 



224 



PARADISE LOST 



Hath, unbesought, provided, and his hands 
Clothed us unworthy, pitying while he 

judged. 1059 

How much more, if we pray him, will his ear 
Be open, and his heart to pity incline, 
And teach us further by what means to shun 
The inclement seasons, rain, ice, hail, and 

snow ! 
Which now the sky, with various face, 

begins 
To shew us in this mountain, while the 

winds 
Blow moist and keen, shattering the grace- 
ful locks 
Of these fair spreading trees; which bids 

us seek 
Some better shroud, some better warmth 

to cherish 
Our limbs benumbed — ere this diurnal 

star 1069 

Leave cold the night, how we his gathered 

beams 
Reflected may with matter sere foment, 
Or by collision of two bodies grind 
The air attrite to fire ; as late the clouds, 
Justling, or pushed with winds, rude in 

their shock, 
Tine the slant lightning, whose thwart 

flame, driven down, 
Kindles the gummy bark of fir or pine, 
And sends a comfortable heat from far, 
Which might supply the Sun. Such fire to 

use, 
And what may else be remedy or cure 1079 
To evils which our own misdeeds have 

wrought, 



He will instruct us praying, and of grace 
Beseeching him; so as we need not fear 
To pass commodiously this life, sustained 
By him with many comforts, till we end 
In dust, our final rest and native home. 
What better can we do than, to the place 
Repairing where he judged us, prostrate 

fall 
Before him reverent, and there confess 
Humbly our faults, and pardon beg, with 

tears 
Watering the ground, and with our sighs 

the air 1090 

Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in 

sign 
Of sorrow unfeigned and humiliation 

meek ? 
Undoubtedly he will relent, and turn 
From his displeasure, in whose look serene, 
When angry most he seemed and most 

severe, 
What else but favour, grace, and mercy 

shon ? " 
So spake our Father penitent; nor Eve 
Felt less remorse. They, forthwith to the 

place 
Repairing where he judged them, prostrate 

fell 1099 

Before him reverent, and both confessed 
Humbly their faults, and pardon begged, 

with tears 
Watering the ground, and with their sighs 

the air 
Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in 

sign 
Of sorrow unfeigned and humiliation meek. 



BOOK XI 



THE ARGUMENT 

The Son of God presents to his Father the prayers of 
our first parents now repenting, and intercedes for them. 
God accepts them, but declares that they must no longer 
abide in Paradise ; sends Michael with a band of Cheru- 
bim to dispossess them, but first to reveal to Adam future 
things : Michael's coming down. Adam shews to Eve 
certain ominous signs: he discerns Michael's approach; 
goes out to meet him : the Angel denounces their de- 
parture. Eve's lamentation. Adam pleads, but sub- 
mits : the Angel leads him up to a high hill ; sets before 
him in vision what shall happen till the Flood. 

Thus they, in lowliest plight, repentant 

stood 
Praying; for from the Mercy-seat above 



I Prevenient grace descending had removed 
The stony from their hearts, and made new 

flesh 
Regenerate grow instead, that sighs now 

breathed 
Unutterable, which the Spirit of prayer 
Inspired, and winged for Heaven with 

speedier flight , I 
Than loudest oratory. \' Yet their port 
Not of mean suitors; nor important less 
Seemed their petition than when the ancient 

Pair 10 

In fables old, less ancient yet than these, 
Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha, to restore 
The race of mankind drowned, before the 

shrine 



BOOK ELEVENTH 



Of Themis stood devout. To Heaven their 

prayers 
Flew up, nor missed the way, by envious 

winds 
Blown vagabond or frustrate : in they 



Dimensionless through heavenly doors; 

then, clad 
With incense, where the Golden Altar 

fumed, 
By their great Intercessor, came in sight 
Before the Father's Throne. Them the 

glad Son 20 

Presenting thus to intercede began: — 
" See, Father, what first-fruits on Earth 

are sprung 
From thy implanted grace in Man — these 

sighs 
And prayers, which in this golden censer, 

mixed 
With incense, I, thy priest, before thee 

bring; 
Fruits of more pleasing savour, from thy 

seed 
Sown with contrition in his heart, than 

those 
Which, his own hand manuring, all the 

trees 
Of Paradise could have produced, ere fallen 
From innocence. ^>-Now, therefore, bend 

thine ear 30 

To supplication; hear his sighs, though 

mute; 
Unskilful with what words to pray, let me 
Interpret for him, me his Advocate 
And propitiation; all his works on me, 
Good or not good, ingraft; my merit those 
Shall perfet, and for these my death shall 

pay- 
Accept me, and in me from these receive 
The smell of peace toward Mankind; let 

him live, 
Before thee reconciled, at least his days 
Numbered, though sad, till death, his doom 

(which I 40 

To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse), 
To better life shall yield him, where with 

me 
All my redeemed may dwell in joy and 

bliss, 
Made one with me, as I with thee am onei^ 
To whom the Father, without cloud 

serene: — 
" All thy request for Man, accepted Son, 
Obtain; all thy request was my decree. 



But longer in that Paradise to dwell 
The law I gave to Nature him forbids; 49 
Those pure immortal elements, that know 
No gross, no unharmonious mixture foul, 
Eject him, tainted now, and purge him off, 
As a distemper, gross, to air as gross, 
And mortal food, as may dispose him best 
For dissolution wrought by sin, that first 
Distempered all things, and of incorrupt 
Corrupted. I, at first, with two fair gifts 
Created him endowed — with Happiness 
And Immortality; that fondly lost, 
This other served but to eternize woe, 60 
Till I provided Death: so Death becomes 
His final remedy, and, after life 
Tried in sharp tribulation, and refined 
By faith and faithful works, to second life, 
Waked in the renovation of the just, 
Resigns him up with Heaven and Earth 

renewed. 
But let us call to synod all the Blest 
Through Heaven's wide bounds; from them 

I will not hide 
My judgments — how with Mankind I pro- 
ceed, 
As how with peccant Angels late they 
saw, 70 

And in their state, though firm, stood more 
confirmed." 
He ended, and the Son gave signal high 
To the bright Minister that watched. He 

blew 
His trumpet, heard in Oreb since perhaps 
When God descended, and perhaps once 

more 
To sound at general doom. The angelic 

blast 
Filled all the regions: from their blissful 

bowers 
Of amarantin shade, fountain or spring, 
By the waters of life, where'er they sate 
In fellowships of joy, the Sons of Light 80 
Hasted, resorting to the summons high, 
And took their seats, till from his Throne 

supreme 
The Almighty thus pronounced his sovran 
will: — 
" O Sons, like one of us Man is become 
To know both Good and Evil, since his taste 
Of that defended Fruit; but let him boast 
His knowledge of good lost and evil got, 
Happier had it sufficed him to have known 
Good by itself and evil not at all. 
He sorrows now, repents, and prays con- 
trite — 90 



226 



PARADISE LOST 



My motions in him; longer than they move, 
His heart I know how variable and vain, 
Self-left. Lest, therefore, his now bolder 

hand 
Reach also of the Tree of Life, and eat, 
And live for ever, dream at least to live 
For ever, to remove him I decree, 
And send him from the Garden forth, to 

till 
The ground whence he was taken, fitter soil. 
Michael, this my behest have thou in charge : 
Take to thee from among the Cherubim 100 
Thy choice of flaming warriors, lest the 

Fiend, 
Or in behalf of Man, or to invade 
Vacant possession, some new trouble raise; 
Haste thee, and from the Paradise of God 
Without remorse drive out the sinful pair, 
From hallowed ground the unholy, and de- 
nounce 
To them, and to their progeny, from thence 
Perpetual banishment, i Yet, lest they faint 
At the sad sentence rigorously urged 
(For I behold them softened, and with 

tears 1 10 

Bewailing their excess), all terror hide. 
If patiently thy bidding they obey, 
Dismiss them not disconsolate; reveal 
To Adam what shall come in future days, 
As I shall thee enlighten; intermix 
My covenant in the Woman's seed re- 
newed. 
So send them for^h, though sorrowing, yet 

in peace; / 
And on the east side of the Garden place, 
Where entrance up from Eden easiest 

climbs, 119 

Cherubic watch, and of a Sword the flame 
Wide-waving, all approach far off to fright, 
And guard all passage to the Tree of Life; 
Lest Paradise a receptacle prove 
To Spirits foul, and all my trees their prey, 
With whose stolen fruit Man once more to 

delude." 
He ceased, and the Archangelic Power . 

prepared ____ J&I 

For swift descent; with him the cohort 

bright 
Of watchful Cherubim. Four faces each 
Had, like a double Janus; all their shape 
Spangled with eyes more numerous than 

those 130 

Of Argus, and more wakeful than to drowse, 
Charmed with Arcadian pipe, the pastoral 

reed 



Of Hermes, or his opiate rod^j Meanwhile, 
To resalute the World with sacred light, 
Leucothea waked, and with fresh dews im 

balmed 
The Earth, when Adam and first matron 

Eve 
Had ended now their orisons, and found 
Strength added from above, new hope to 

spring 
Out of despair, joy, but with fear yet linked; 
Which thus to Eve his welcome words re- 
newed: — 140 
" Eve, easily may faith admit that all 
The good which we enjoy from Heaven de- 
scends; 
But that from us aught should ascend to 

Heaven 
So prevalent as to concern the mind 
Of God high-blest, or to incline his will, 
Hard to belief may seem. Yet this will 

prayer, 
Or one short sigh of human breath, up- 
borne 
Even to the seat of God. For, since I 

sought 
By prayer the offended Deity to appease, 
Kneeled and before him humbled all my 
heart, 150 

Methought I saw him placable and mild, 
Bending his earj^persuasion in me grew 
That I was heard with favour; peace re- 
turned 
Home to my breast, and to my memory 
His promise that thy seed shall bruise our 

Foe; 
Which, then not minded in dismay, yet 

now 
Assures me that the bitterness of death 
Is past, and we shall live. Whence hail to 

thee ! 

Eve rightly called, Mother of all Mankind, 

Mother of all things living, since by thee 160 

Man is to live, and all things live for Man." 

To whom thus Eve with sad demeanour 

meek: — 
11-worthy I such title should belong 
To me transgressor, who, for thee ordained 
A help, became thy snare; to me reproach 
Rather belongs, distrust and all dispraise. 
But infinite in pardon was my Judge, 
That I, who first brought death on all, am 

graced 
The source of life; next favourable thou, 
Who highly thus to entitle me voutsaf 'st, 170 
Far other name deserving. But the field 






BOOK ELEVENTH 



227 



To labour calls us, now with sweat im- 
posed, 

Though after sleepless night; for see ! the 
Morn, 

All unconcerned with our unrest, begins 

Her rosy progress smiling. Let us forth, 

I never from thy side henceforth to stray, 

Where'er our day's work lies, though now 
enjoined 

Laborious, till day droop. While here we 
dwell, 
» What can be toilsome in these pleasant 

walks ? 

Here let us live, though in fallen state, con- 
tent." * q d_ 180 
So spake, so wished, much-humbled Eve; 
but Fate 

Subscribed not. Nature first gave signs, 
impressed 

On bird, beast, air — air suddenly eclipsed, 

After short blush of morn. Nigh in her 
sight 

The bird of Jove, stooped from his aerie 
tour, 

Two birds of gayest plume before him 
drove; 

Down from a hill the beast that reigns in 
woods, 
y First hunter then, pursued a gentle brace, 

Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind; 

Direct to the eastern gate was bent their 
flight. 190 

Adam observed, and, with his eye the chase 

Pursuing, not unmoved to Eve thus 
spake : — 
" O Eve, some furder change awaits us 
nigh, 

Which Heaven by these mute signs in Na- 
ture shews, 

Forerunners of his purpose, or to warn 

Us, haply too secure of our discharge 

From penalty because from death released 

Some days: how long, and what till then 
our life, 

Who knows, or more than this, that we are 
dust, 

And thither must return, and be no 
more ? 200 

Why else this double object in our sight, 

Of flight pursued in the air and o'er the 
ground 

One way the self-same hour ? Why in the 
east 

Darkness ere day's mid-course, and morn- 
ing-light 



More orient in yon western cloud, that 

draws 
O'er the blue firmament a radiant white, • 
And slow descends, with something Hea- 
venly fraught ? " 
He erred not; for, by this, the Heavenly 
bands 
Down from a sky of jasper lighted now 
In Paradise, and on a hill made halt — 210 
A glorious Apparition, had not doubt 
And carnal fear that day dimmed Adam's 

eye. 
Not that more glorious, when the Angels 

met 
Jacob in Mahanaim, where he saw 
The field pavilioned with his guardians 

bright ; 
Nor that which on the flaming Mount ap- 
peared 
In Dothan, covered with a camp of fire, 
Against the Syrian king, who, to surprise 
One man, assassin-like, had levied war, 
War unproclaimed. The princely Hier- 
arch 220 

In their bright stand there left his Powers 

to seize 
Possession of the Garden; he alone, 
To find where Adam sheltered, took his 

way, 
Not unperceived of Adam; who to Eve, 
While the great Visitant approached, thus 

spake : - 

" Eve, now expect great tidings, which, 
perhaps, 
Of us will soon determine, or impose 
New laws to be observed; for I descry, 
From yonder blazing cloud that veils the 

hill, 
One of the Heavenly host, and, by his 
gait, 230 

None of the meanest — some great Poten- 
tate 
Or of the Thrones above, such majesty 
Invests him coming; /yet not terrible, 
That I should fear, nor sociably mild, 
As Raphael, that I should much confide, 
But solemn and sublime; whom, not to 

offend, 
With reverence I must meet, and thou re- 
tire." 
He ended; and the Archangel soon drew 
nigh, 
Not in his shape celestial, but as man 
Clad to meet man. Over his lucid arms 240 
A military vest of purple flowed, 



228 



PARADISE LOST 



Livelier than Meliboean, or the grain 
Of Sarra, worn by kings and heroes old 
In time of truce; Iris had dipt the woof. 
His starry helm unbuckled shewed him 

prime 
In manhood where youth ended; by his side, 
As in a glistering zodiac, hung the sword, 
Satan's dire dread, and in his hand the 

spear. i 
Adam bowed low£ he, kingly, from his state 
Inclined not, bjit his coming thus de- 
clared: -v 250 
" Adam, Heaven's high behest no preface 

needs. 
Sufficient that thy prayers are heard, and 

Death, 
Then due by sentence when thou didst 

transgress, 
Defeated of his seizure many days, 
Given thee of grace, wherein thou may'st 

repent, 
And one bad act with many deeds well done 
May'st cover. Well may then thy Lord, 

appeased, 
Redeem thee quite from Death's rapacious 

claim ; 
But longer in this Paradise to dwell 
Permits not. To remove thee I am come, 
And send thee from the Garden forth, to 

till 261 

The ground whence thou wast taken, fitter 

soil." 
. He added not; for Adam, at the news 
Heart-strook, with chilling gripe of sorrow 

stood, 
That all his senses bound; Eve, who un- 
seen 
Yet all had heard, with audible lament 
Discovered soon the place of her retire: — 

r" O unexpected stroke, worse than of 
Death ! 
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise ? thus 

leave 
Thee, native soil ? these happy walks and 

shades, 270 

Fit haunt of Gods, where I had hope to 

spend, 
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day 
That must be mortal to us both ? O 

flowers, 
That never will in other climate grow, 
My early visitation, and my last 
At even, which I bred up with tender hand 
From the first opening bud, and gave ye 

names, 



Who now shall rear ye to the Sun, or rank 
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial 

fount ? 
Thee, lastly, nuptial bower, by me adorned 
With what to sight or smell was sweet, 

from thee 281 

How shall I part, and whither wander 

down 
Into a lower world, to this obscure 
And wild ? How shall we breathe in other 

air .1 

Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits ? " J 

Whom thus the Angel interrupted mildl 
" Lament not, Eve, but patiently resign 
What justly thou hast lost; nor set thy 

heart, 
Thus over- fond, on that which is not thine. 
Thy going is not lonely; with thee goes 290 
Thy husband; him to follow thou art 

bound; 
Where he abides, think there thy native 

soil." 
Adam, by this from the cold sudden 

damp 
Recovering, and his scattered spirits re- 
turned, 
To Michael thus his humble words ad- 
dressed: — 
" Celestial, whether among the Thrones, 

or named 
Of them the highest — for such of shape 

may seem 
Prince above princes — gently hast thou 

told 
Thy message, which might else in telling 

wound, 
And in performing end us. What be- 
sides 300 
Of sorrow, and dejection, and despair, 
Our frailty can sustain, thy tidings bring — 
Departure from this happy place, our sweet 
Recess, and only consolation left 
Familiar to our eyes; all places else 
Inhospitable appear, and desolate,.^ 
Nor knowing us, nor known. / And, if by 

prayer »" v 

Incessant I could hope to change the will 
Of Him who all things can, I would not 

cease 
To weary him with my assiduous cries; 310 
But prayer against his absolute decree 
No more avails than breath against the 

wind, 
Blown stifling back on him that breathes it 

forth: 






BOOK ELEVENTH 



229 



Therefore to his great bidding I submit. J 
This most afflicts me — that, departing 

hence, 
As from his face I shall be hid, depriv ed 
His blessed countenance. Here~T could 

frequent, 
With worship, place by place where he 

voutsafed 
Presence Divine, and to my sons relate, 
'On this mount He appeared; under this 

tree 320 

Stood visible; among these pines his voice 
I heard; here with him at this fountain 

talked.' 
So many grateful altars I would rear 
Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone 
Of lustre from the brook, in memory 
Or monument to ages, and thereon 
Offer sweet-smelling gums, and fruits, and 

flowers. 
In yonder nether world where shall I seek 
His bright appearances, or footstep trace ? 
For, though I fled him angry, yet, recalled 
To life prolonged and promised race, I 

now 331 

Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts 
Of glory, and far off his steps adore." 
To whom thus Michael, with regard be- 

4nign: — 
" Adam, thou know'st Heaven his, and all 
the Earth, 
Not this rock only; his omnipresence fills 
Land, sea, and air, and every kind that 

lives, 
Fomented by his virtual power and warmed. 
All the Earth he gave thee to possess and 

rule, 
No despicable gift; surmise not, then, 340 
His presence to these narrow bounds con- 
fined ] — ' 
Of Paradise or Eden. 1 This had been 
Perhaps thy capital seaE7from whence had 

spread 
All generations, and had hither come, 
From all the ends of the Earth, to cele- 
brate 
And reverence thee their great progenitor. 
But this pre - eminence thou hast lost, 

brought down 
To dwell on even ground now with thy sons: 
Yet doubt not but in valley and in plain 

Gad is, as here, and will be found alike 350 

Present, and of his presence many a sign 
Still following thee, still compassing thee 
round 



With goodness and paternal love, his face 
Express, and of his steps the track divin 
Which that thou may'st believe, and be 

confirmed 
Ere thou from hence depart, know I am 

sent 
To shew thee what shall come in future 

days 
To thee and to thy offspring. Good with 

bad 
Expect to hear, supernal grace contending 
With sinfulness of men — thereby to learn 
True patience, and to temper joy with fear 
And pious sorrow, equally inured 362 

By moderation either state to bear, 
Prosperous or adverse: so shalt thou lead 
Safest thy life, and best prepared endure 
Thy mortal passage when it comes. As- 
cend 
This hill; let Eve (for I have drenched her 



HertTsIeep below while thou to foresight 

wak'st, 
As once thou slept' st while she to life was 
formed." 
To whom thus Adam gratefully re- 
plied : — 370 
"Ascend; I follow thee, safe Guide, the 

path 
Thou lead'st me, and to the hand of Hea- 
ven submit, 
However chastening — to the evil turn 
My obvious breast, arming to overcome 
By suffering, and earn rest from labour 

won, 
If so I may attain." So both ascend 
In the Visions of God. It was a hill, 
Of Paradise the highest, from whose top 
The hemisphere of Earth in clearest ken 
Stretched out to the amplest reach of pro- 
spect lay. 380 
Not higher that hill, nor wider looking 

round, 
Whereon for different cause the Tempter 

set 
Our second Adam, in the wilderness, 
To shew him all Earth's kingdoms and 

their glory. 
His eye might there command wherever 

stood 
City of old or modern fame, the seat 
Of mightiest empire, from the destined 

walls 
Of Cambalu, seat of Cathaian Can, 
And Samarchand by Oxus, Temir's throne, 



230 



PARADISE LOST 



To Paquin, of Sinaean kings, and thence 390 
To Agra and Lahor of Great Mogul, 
Down to the golden Chersonese, or where 
The Persian in Ecbatan sat, or since 
In Hispahan, or where the Russian Ksar 
In Mosco, or the Sultan in Bizance, 
Turchestan-born ; nor could his eye not ken 
The empire of Negus to his utmost port 
Ercoco, and the less maritime kings, 
Mombaza, and Quiloa, and Melind, 
And Sofala (thought Ophir), to the realm 
Of Congo, and Angola fardest south, 401 
Or thence from Niger flood to Atlas mount, 
The kingdoms of Almansor, Fez and Sus, 
Marocco, and Algiers, and Tremisen; 
On Europe thence, and where Rome was 

to sway 
The world: in spirit perhaps he also saw 
Rich Mexico, the seat of Montezume, 
And Cusco in Peru, the richer seat 
Of Atabalipa, and yet unspoiled 
Guiana, whose great city Geryon's sons 410 
Call El Dorado. But to nobler sights 
Michael from Adam's eyes the film re- 
moved 
Which that false fruit that promised clearer 

sight 
Had bred; then purged with euphrasy and 

rue 
The visual nerve, for he had much to see, 
And from the well of life three drops in- 
stilled. 
So deep the power of these ingredients 

pierced, 
Even to the inmost seat of mental sight, 
That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes, 
Sunk down, and all his spirits became in- 
tranced. 420 
But him the gentle Angel by the hand 
Soon raised, and his attention thus re- 
-called : — 



" Adam, now ope thine eyes, and first 
behold 

The effects which thy original crime hath 
wrought 

In some to spring from thee, who never 
touched 

The excepted Tree, nor with the Snake 
conspired, 

Nor sinned thy sin, yet from that sin de- 
rive 

Corruption to bring forth more violent 
deeds." 
His eyes he opened, and beheld a field, 

Part arable and tilth, whereon were sheaves 



New-reaped, the other part sheep-walks 
and folds; 43 1 

I' the midst an altar as the landmark stood, 
Rustic, of grassy sord. Thither anon 
A sweaty reaper from his tillage brought 
First-fruits, the green ear and the yellow 

sheaf, 
Unculled, as came to hand. A shepherd 

next, 
More meek, came with the firstlings of his 

flock, 
Choicest and best; then, sacrificing, laid 
The inwards and their fat, with incense 

strewed, 
On the cleft wood, and all due rites per- 
formed. 440 
His offering soon propitious fire from hea- 
ven 
Consumed, with nimble glance and grate- 
ful steam; 
The other's not, for his was not sincere: 
Whereat he inly raged, and, as they talked, 
Smote him into the midriff with a stone 
That beat out life; he fell, and, deadly pale, 
Groaned out his soul, with gushing blood 

effused. 
Much at that sight was Adam in his heart 
Dismayed, and thus in haste to the Angel 
cried: — 
" O Teacher, some great mischief hath 
befallen 450 

To that meek man, who well had sacrificed: 
Is piety thus and pure devotion paid ? " 
To whom Michael thus, he also moved, 
replied : — 
" These two are brethren, Adam, and to 

come 
Out of thy loins. The unjust the just hath 

slain, 
For envy that his brother's offering found 
From Heaven acceptance; but the bloody 

fact 
Will be avenged, and the other's faith ap- 
proved 
Lose no reward, though here thou see him 

die, 

Rowling in dust and gore." To which our 

Sire : — 460 

" Alas, both for the deed and for the 

■**. cause ! 

But have I now seen Death ? Is this the 

way 
I must return to native dust ? O sight 
Of terror, foul and ugly to behold ! 
Horrid to think, how horrible to feel ! " 



. 



BOOK ELEVENTH 



231 



To whom thus Michael:— j" Death thou 
hast seen ^- — 

In his first shape on Man ; but many shapes 
Of Death, and many are the ways that lead 
To his grim cave — all dismal, yet to sense 
More terrible at the entrance than 
within. 470 

e, as thou saw'st, by violent stroke 
shall die, 
By fire, flood, famine; by intemperance 

more 
In meats and drinks, which on the Earth 

shall bring 
Diseases dire, of which a monstrous crew 
Before thee shall appear, that thou may'st 

know 
What misery the inabstinence of Eve 
Shall bring on men." Immediately a place 
Before his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, 

dark; 
A lazar-house it seemed, wherein were laid 
Numbers of all diseased — all maladies 480 
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture. 

qualms 
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, 
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, 
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs, 
Dsemoniac phrenzy, moping melancholy, 
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, 
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, 
Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking 

rheums. 
Dire was the tossing, deep the groans; De- 
spair 
Tended the sick, busiest from couch to 
couch; 490 

And over them triumphant Death his dart 
Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft in- 
voked 
With vows, as their chief good and final 

hope. 
Sight so deform what heart of rock couhj 

long 
Dry-eyed behold ? Adam could not, but 

wep%- 
Thongh not of woman born: compassion 

quelled 
His best of man, and gave him up to tears 
A space r till firmer thoughts restrained ex- 
cess, 
And, scarce recovering words, his plaint 
renewed: — 
" O miserable Mankind, to what fall 500 
Degraded, to what wretched state reserved ! 
Better end here unborn. Why is life given 






To be thus wrested from us ? rather why 
Obtruded on us thus ? who, if we knew 
What we receive, would either not accept 
Life offered, or soon beg to lay it down, 
Glad to be so dismissed in peace. Can 

thus 
The image of God in Man, created once 
So goodly and erect, though faulty since, 
To such unsightly sufferings be debased 510 
Under inhuman pains ? Why should not 

Man, 
Retaining still divine similitude 
Jn- part, from such deformities be free, 
And for his Maker's image' sake exempt ? " 
" Their Maker's image," answered Mi- 
chael, " then 
Forsook them, when themselves they vilified 
To serve ungoverned Appetite, and took 
His image whom they served — a brutish 

vice, 

Inductive mainly to the sin of Eve.-^^' 
Therefore so abject is their punishment, 520 
Disfiguring not God's likeness, but their 

own; 
Or, if his likeness, by themselves defaced 
While they pervert pure Nature's health- 
ful rules 
To loathsome sickness — worthily, since 

they 
God's image did not reverence in them- 
selves." 
" I yield it just," said Adam, " and sub- 

jr- mit. 

[But is there yet no other way, besides 

{These painful passages, how we may come 

To death, and mix with our connatural 

dust ? " 

"There is," said Michael, "if thou well 

observe 530 

The rule of Not^toojntici^ by temperance 

taught 
In what thou eat'st and drink'st, seeking 

from thence 
Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight, 
Till many years over thy head return. 
So may'st thou live, till, like ripe fruit, thou 

drop 
Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease 
Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death 

mature. 
This is old age; but then thou must outlive 
Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which 

will change 
To withered, weak, and grey; thy senses 
then, 540 



232 



PARADISE LOST 



Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forgo 
To what thou hast; and, for the air of 

youth, 
Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will 

reign 
A melancholy damp of cold and dry, 
To weigh thy spirits down, and last con- 
sume 
The balm of life.'*'. To whom our Ances- 
tors— ^\ 

" Henceforth I fly not death, nor would 

prolong 
Life much — bent rather how I may be 

quit, 
Fairest and easiest, of this cumbrous charge, 
Which I must keep till my appointed day 
Of rendering up, and patiently attend 551 
My dissolution." Michael replied: — 
"Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what 

thou liv'st 
Live well; how long or short permit to 

Heaven. 
And now prepare thee for another sight." 
He looked, and saw a spacious plain, 

whereon 
Were tents of various hue: by some were 

herds 
Of cattle grazing: others whence the sound 
Of instruments that made melodious chime 
Was heard, of harp and organ, and who 

moved 560 

Their stops and chords was seen : his volant 

touch 
Instinct through all proportions low and 

high 
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant 

fugue. 
In other part stood one who, at the forge 
Labouring, two massy clods of iron and 

brass 
Had melted (whether found where casual 

fire 
Had wasted woods, on mountain or in vale 
Down to the veins of earth, thence gliding, 

hot 
To some cave's mouth, or whether washed 

by stream 
From underground); the liquid ore he 

drained 570 

Into fit moulds prepared; from which he 

formed 
First his own tools, then what might else be 

wrought 
Fusil or graven in metal. After these, 
But on the hither side, a different sort 



From the high neighbouring hills, which 

was their seat, 
Down to the plain descended: by their guise 
Just men they seemed, and all their study 

bent 
To worship God aright, and know his works 
Not hid; nor those things last which might 

preserve 
Freedom and peace to men. They on the 

plain 580 

Long had not walked when from the tents 

behold 
A bevy of fair women, richly gay 
In gems and wanton dress ! to the harp 

they sung 
Soft amorous ditties, and in dance came on. 
The men, though grave, eyed them, and let 

their eyes 
Rove without rein, till, in the amorous net 
Fast caught, they liked, and each his liking 

chose. 
And now of love they treat, till the even- 
ing-star, 
Love's harbinger, appeared; then, all in 

heat, 
They light the nuptial torch, and bid in- 
voke 590 
Hymen, then first to marriage rites invoked : 
With feast and music all the tents resound. 
Such happy interview, and fair event 
Of love and youth not lost, songs, garlands, 

flowers, 
And charming symphonies, attached the 

heart 
Of Adam, soon inclined to admit delight, 
The bent of Nature; which he thus ex- 
pressed: — 
y* r True opener of mine eyes, prime An- 
' gel blest, 

Much better seems this vision, and more 1 , 

hope 
Of peaceful days portends, than those two \ 

past: 600 vW 

Those were of hate and death, or pain much 

worse ; 
Here Nature seems fulfilled in all her ends." 
"To whom thus Michael: — "Judge not 

what is best 
By pleasure, though to Nature seeming 

meet, 
Created, as thou art, to nobler end, 
Holy and pure, conformity divine. 
Those tents thou saw'st so pleasant were 

the tents 
Of wickedness, wherein shall dwell his race 



BOOK ELEVENTH 



2 33 



Who slew his brother: studious they appear 
Of arts that polish life, inventors rare; 610 
Unmindful of their Maker, though his 

Spirit 
Taught them; but they his gifts acknow- 
ledged none. 
Yet they a beauteous offspring shall beget; 
For that fair female troop thou saw'st, that 

seemed 
Of goddesses, so blithe, so smooth, so gay, 
Yet empty of all good wherein consists 
Woman's domestic honour and chief praise ; 
Bred only and completed to the taste 
Of lustful appetence, to sing, to dance, 
To dress, and troll the tongue, and roll the 
eye;— 620 

To these that sober race of men, whose 

lives 
Religious titled them the Sons of God, 
Shall yield up all their virtue, all their fame, 
Ignobly, to the trains and to the smiles 
Of these fair atheists, and now swim in joy 
(Erelong to swim at large) and laugh; for 

which 
The world erelong a world of tears must 
weep." 
To whom thus Adam, of short joy be- 
reft:— 
" O pity and shame, that they who to live 
well 629 

Entered so fair should turn aside to tread 
Paths indirect, or in the midway faint ! 
But still I see the tenor of Man's woe 
Holds on the same, from Woman to begin." 
" From Man's effeminate slackness it be- 
gins," 
Said the Angel, " who should better hold 

his place 
By wisdom, and superior gifts received. 
But now prepare thee for another scene." 

He looked, and saw wide territory spread 
Before him — towns, and rural works be- 
tween, 
Cities of men with lofty gates and towers, 
Concourse in arms, fierce faces threatening 
war, 641 

Giants of mighty bone and bold emprise. 
Part wield their arms, part curb the foam- 
ing steed, 
Single or in array of battle ranged 
Both horse and foot, nor idly mustering 

stood. 
One way a band select from forage drives 
A herd of beeves, fair oxen and fair kine, 
From a fat meadow-ground, or fleecy flock, 



Ewes and their bleating lambs, over the 

plain, 
Their booty; scarce with life the shepherds 

fly, _ 6 5 o 

But call in aid, which makes a bloody fray: 
With cruel tournament the squadrons join; 
Where cattle pastured late, now scattered 

lies 
With carcasses and arms the ensanguined 

field 
Deserted. Others to a city strong 
Lay siege, encamped, by battery, scale, and 

mine, 
Assaulting; others from the wall defend 
With dart and javelin, stones and sulphur- 
ous fire; 
On each hand slaughter and gigantic deeds. 
In other part the sceptred haralds call 660 
To council in the city-gates: anon 
Grey-headed men and grave, with warriors 

mixed, 
Assemble, and harangues are heard; but 

soon 
In factious opposition, till at last 
Of middle age one rising, eminent 
In wise deport, spake much of right and 

wrong, 
Of justice, of religion, truth, and peace, 
And judgment from above: him old and 

young 
Exploded, and had seized with violent 

hands, 
Had not a cloud descending snatched him 

thence, 670 

Unseen amid the throng. So violence 
Proceeded, and oppression, and sword-law, 
Through all the plain, and refuge none was 

found. 
Adam was all in tears, and to his guide 
Lamenting turned full sad: — " Oh, what 

are these ? 
Death's ministers, not men ! who thus deal 

death 
Inhumanly to men, and multiply 
Ten thousandfold the sin of him who slew 
His brother; for of whom such massacre 
Make they but of their brethren, men of 

men ? 680 

But who was that just man, whom had not 

Heaven 
Rescued, had in his righteousness been 

lost ? " 
To whom thus Michael: — "These are 

the product' 
Of those ill-mated marriages thou saw'st, 



234 



PARADISE LOST 



Where good with bad were matched; who 

of themselves 
Abhor to join, and, by imprudence mixed, 
Produce prodigious births of body or mind. 
Such were these Giants, men of high re- 
nown; 
For in those days might only shall be ad- 
mired, 
And valour and heroic virtue called. 690 
To overcome in battle, and subdue 
Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite 
Manslaughter, shall be held the highest 

pitch 
Of human glory, and, for glory done, 
Of triumph to be styled great conquerors, 
Patrons of mankind, gods, and sons of 

gods — 
Destroyers rightlier called, and Plagues of 

men. 
Thus fame shall be achieved, renown on 

earth, 
And what most merits fame in silence hid. 
But he, the seventh from thee, whom thou 
beheld'st 700 

The only righteous in a world perverse, 
And therefore hated, therefore so beset 
With foes, for daring single to be just, 
And utter odious truth, that God would 

come 
To judge them with his Saints — him the 

Most High, 
Rapt in a balmy cloud, with winged steeds, 
Did, as thou saw'st, receive, to walk with 

God 
High in salvation and the climes of bliss, 
Exempt from death, to show thee what re- 
ward 
Awaits the good, the rest what punish- 
ment; 710 
Which now direct thine eyes and soon be- 
hold." 
He looked, and saw the face of things 
quite changed. 
The brazen throat of war had ceased to 

roar; 
All now was turned to jollity and game, 
To luxury and riot, feast and dance, 
Marrying or prostituting, as befell, 
Rape or adultery, where passing fair 
Allured them; thence from cups to civil 

broils. 
At length a reverend Sire among them 
came, 719 

And of their doings great dislike declared, 
And testified against their ways. He oft 



Frequented their assemblies, whereso met, 
Triumphs or festivals, and to them preached 
Conversion and repentance, as to souls 
In prison, under judgments imminent; 
But all in vain. Which when he saw, he 

ceased 
Contending, and removed his tents far off; 
Then, from the mountain hewing timber 

tall, 
Began to build a Vessel of huge bulk, 
Measured by cubit, length, and breadth, 

and highth, 730 

Smeared round with pitch, and in the side 

a door 
Contrived, and of provisions laid in large 
For man and beast: when lo ! a wonder 

strange ! 
Of every beast, and bird, and insect small, 
Came sevens and pairs, and entered in, as 

taught 
Their order; last, the Sire and his three 

sons, 
With their four wives ; and God made fast 

the door. 
Meanwhile the South-wind rose, and, with 

black wings 
Wide - hovering, all the clouds together 

drove 
From under heaven; the hills to their 

supply 740 

Vapour, and exhalation dusk and moist, 
Sent up amain; and now the thickened 

sky 
Like a dark ceiling stood: down rushed the 

rain 
Impetuous, and continued till the earth 
No more was seen. The floating Vessel 

swum 
Uplifted, and secure with beaked prow 
Rode tilting o'er the waves; all dwellings 

else 
Flood overwhelmed, and them with all 

their pomp 
Deep under water rowled; sea covered sea, 
Sea without shore: and in their palaces, 750 
Where luxury late reigned, sea-monsters 

whelped 
And stabled: of mankind, so numerous 

late, 
All left in one small bottom swum im- 

barked. 
How didst thou grieve then, Adam, to be- 
hold 
The end of all thy offspring, end so sad, 
Depopulation ! Thee another flood, 



BOOK ELEVENTH 



2 35 



Of tears and sorrow a flood thee also 

drowned, 
And sunk thee as thy sons; till, gently 

reared 
By the Angel, on thy feet thou stood'st at 

last, 
Though comfortless, as when a father 

mourns 760 

His children, all in view destroyed at once, 
And scarce to the Angel utter'dst thus thy 

plaint: — 
" O Visions ill foreseen ! Better had I 
Lived ignorant of future — so had borne 
My part of evil only, each day's lot 
Enough to bear. Those now that were dis- 
pensed 
The burden of many ages on me light 
At once, by my foreknowledge gaining 

birth 
Abortive, to torment me, ere their being, 
With thought that they must be. Let no 

man seek 770 

Henceforth to be foretold what shall befall 
Him or his children — evil, he may be 

sure, 
Which neither his foreknowing can pre- 
vent, 
And he the future evil shall no less 
In apprehension than in substance feel 
Grievous to bear. But that care now is 

past; 
Man is not whom to warn; those few es- 
caped 
Famine and anguish will at last consume, 
Wandering that watery desert. I had 

hope, 
When violence was ceased and war on 

Earth, 780 

All would have then gone well, peace would 

have crowned 
With length of happy days the race of 

Man; 
But I was far deceived, for now I see 
Peace to corrupt no less than war to waste. 
How comes it thus ? Unfold, Celestial 

Guide, 
And whether here the race of Man will 

end." 
To whom thus Michael : — " Those whom 

last thou saw'st 
In triumph and luxurious wealth are they 
First seen in acts of prowess eminent 
And great exploits, but of true virtue void; 
Who, having spilt much blood, and done 

much waste, 791 



Subduing nations, and achieved thereby 
Fame in the world, high titles, and rich 

prey, 
Shall change their course to pleasure, ease, 

and sloth, 
Surfeit, and lust, till wantonness and pride 
Raise out of friendship hostile deeds in 

peace. 
The conquered, also, and enslaved by war, 
Shall, with their freedom lost, all virtue 

lose, 
And fear of God — from whom their piety 

feigned 
In sharp contest of battle found no aid 800 
Against invaders; therefore, cooled in zeal, 
Thenceforth shall practise how to live se- 
cure, 
Worldly or dissolute, on what their lords 
Shall leave them to enjoy; for the Earth 

shall bear 
More than enough, that temperance may 

be tried. 
So all shall turn degenerate, all depraved, 
Justice and temperance, truth and faith, 

forgot; 
One man except, the only son of light 
In a dark age, against example good, 809 
Against allurement, custom, and a world 
Offended. Fearless of reproach and scorn, 
Or violence, he of their wicked ways 
Shall them admonish, and before them set 
The paths of righteousness, how much more 

safe 
And full of peace, denouncing wrauth to 

come 
On their impenitence, and shall return 
Of them derided, but of God observed 
The one just man alive: by his command 
Shall build a wondrous Ark, as thou be- 

held'st, 819 

To save himself and household from amidst 
A world devote to universal wrack. 
No sooner he, with them of man and beast 
Select for life, shall in the ark be lodged 
And sheltered round, but all the cataracts 
Of Heaven set open on the Earth shall pour 
Rain day and night; all fountains of the 

deep, 
Broke up, shall heave the ocean to usurp 
Beyond all bounds, till inundation rise 
Above the highest hills. Then shall this 

Mount 829 

Of Paradise by might of waves be moved 
Out of his place, pushed by the horned 

flood, 



236 



PARADISE LOST 



With all his verdure spoiled, and trees 

adrift, 
Down the great River to the opening Gulf, 
And there take root, an island salt and 

bare, 
The haunt of seals, and ores, and sea-mews' 

clang — 
To teach thee that God attributes to place 
No sanctity, if none be thither brought 
By men who there frequent or therein 

dwell. 
And now what f urder shall ensue behold." 
He looked, and saw the Ark hull on the 

flood, 840 

Which now abated; for the clouds were 

fled, 
Driven by a keen North-wind, that, blow- 
ing dry, 
Wrinkled the face of Deluge, as decayed; 
And the clear sun on his wide watery glass 
Gazed hot, and of the fresh wave largely 

drew, 
As after thirst; which made their flowing 

shrink 
From standing lake to tripping ebb, that 

stole 
With soft foot towards the deep, who now 

had stopt 
His sluices, as the heaven his windows 

shut. 
The Ark no more now floats, but seems on 

ground, 850 

Fast on the top of some high mountain 

fixed. 
And now the tops of hills as rocks appear; 
With clamour thence the rapid currents 

drive 
Towards the retreating sea their furious 

tide. 
Forthwith from out the ark a Raven flies, 
And, after him, the surer messenger, 
A Dove, sent forth once and again to spy 
Green tree or ground whereon his foot may 

light; 
The second time returning, in his bill 
An olive-leaf he brings, pacific sign. 860 
Anon dry ground appears, and from his 

ark 
The ancient sire descends, with all his 

train ; 
Then, with uplifted hands and eyes devout, 
Grateful to Heaven, over his head beholds 
A dewy cloud, and in the cloud a Bow 
Conspicuous with three listed colours gay, 



Betokening peace from God, and covenant 

new. 
Whereat the heart of Adam, erst so sad, 
Greatly rejoiced; and thus his joy broke 
forth: — 
" O thou, who future things canst repre- 
sent 870 
As present, Heavenly Instructor, I revive 
At this last sight, assured that Man shall 

live, 
With all the creatures, and their seed pre- 
serve. 
Far less I now lament for one whole world 
Of wicked sons destroyed than I rejoice 
For one man found so perfet and so just 
That God voutsafes to raise another world 
From him, and all his anger to forget. 
But say what mean those coloured streaks 
in Heaven: 879 

Distended as the brow of God appeased ? 
Or serve they as a flowery verge to bind 
The fluid skirts of that same watery cloud, 
Lest it again dissolve and shower the 
Earth ? " 
To whom the Archangel: — " Dextrously 
thou aim'st. 
So willingly doth God remit his ire: 
Though late repenting him of Man de- 
praved, 
Grieved at his heart, when, looking down, 

he saw 
The whole Earth filled with violence, and 

all flesh 
Corrupting each their way; yet, those re- 
moved, 
Such grace shall one just man find in his 
sight 890 

That he relents, not to blot out mankind, 
And makes a covenant never to destroy 
The Earth again by flood, nor let the sea 
Surpass his bounds, nor rain to drown the 

world 
With man therein or beast; but, when he 

brings 
Over the Earth a cloud, will therein set 
His triple-coloured bow, whereon to look 
And call to mind his Covenant. Day and 

night, 
Seed - time and harvest, heat and hoary 

frost, 
Shall hold their course, till fire purge all 
things new, 9 00 

Both Heaven and Earth, wherein the just 
shall dwell." 



BOOK TWELFTH 



2 37 



BOOK XII 

THE ARGUMENT 

The Angel Michael continues, from the Flood, to re- 
late what shall succeed; then, in the mention of Abra- 
ham, comes by degrees to explain who that Seed of the 
Woman shall be which was promised Adam and Eve in 
the Fall : his incarnation, death, resurrection, and as- 
cension; the state of the Church till his second com- 
ing. Adam, greatly satisfied and recomforted by these 
relations and promises, descends the hill with Mi- 
chael; wakens Eve, who all this while had slept, but 
with gentle dreams composed to quietness of mind 
and submission. Michael in either hand leads them 
out of Paradise, the fiery Sword waving behind them, 
and the Cherubim taking their stations to guard the 
place. 

As one who, in his journey, bates at noon, 
Though bent on speed, so here the Arch- 
angel paused 
Betwixt the world destroyed and world re- 
stored, 
If Adam aught perhaps might interpose ; 
Then, with transition sweet, new speech re- 
sumes : — 
"Thus thou hast seen one world begin 
and end, 
And Man as from a second stock proceed. 
Much thou hast yet to see ; but I perceive 
Thy mortal sight to fail; objects divine 9 
Must needs impair and weary human sense. 
Henceforth what is to come I will relate; 
Thou, therefore, give due audience, and at- 
tend. 
"This second source of men, while yet 
but few, 
And while the dread of judgment past re- 
mains 
Fresh in their minds, fearing the Deity, 
With some regard to what is just and right 
Shall lead their lives, and multiply apace, 
Labouring the soil, and reaping plenteous 

crop, 
Corn, wine, and oil; and, from the herd or 

flock 
Oft sacrificing bullock, lamb, or kid, 20 
With large wine-offerings poured, and sa- 
cred feast, 
Shall spend their days in joy unblamed, 

and dwell 
Long time in peace, by families and tribes, 
Under paternal rule, till one shall rise, 
Of proud, ambitious heart, who, not content 
With fair equality, fraternal state, 
Will arrogate dominion undeserved 
Over his brethren, and quite dispossess 



Concord and law of Nature from the 

Earth — 
Hunting (and men, not beasts, shall be his 
game) 30 

With war and hostile snare such as refuse 
Subjection to his empire tyrannous. 
A mighty Hunter thence he shall be styled 
Before the Lord, as in despite of Heaven, 
Or from Heaven claiming second sovranty, 
And from rebellion shall derive his name, 
Though of rebellion others he accuse. 
He, with a crew, whom like ambition joins 
With him or under him to tyrannize, 
Marching from Eden towards the west, 
shall find 40 

The Plain, wherein a black bituminous 

gurge 
Boils out from under ground, the mouth of 

Hell. 
Of brick, and of that stuff, they cast to 

build 
A city and tower, whose top may reach to 

Heaven ; 
And get themselves a name, lest, far dis- 
persed 
In foreign lands, their memory be lost — 
Regardless whether good or evil fame. 
But God, who oft descends to visit men 
Unseen, and through their habitations walks, 
To mark their doings, them beholding soon, 
Comes down to see their city, ere the Tower 
Obstruct Heaven - towers, and in derision 
sets 52 

Upon their tongues a various spirit, to rase 
Quite out their native language, and, in- 
stead, 
To sow a jangling noise of words unknown. 
Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud 
Among the builders; each to other calls, 
Not understood — till, hoarse and all in 

rage, 
As mocked they storm. Great laughter 

was in Heaven, 
And looking down to see the hubbub 
strange 60 

And hear the din. Thus was the building 

left 
Ridiculous, and the work Confusion named." 
Whereto thus Adam, fatherly dis- 
pleased: — 
" O execrable son, so to aspire 
Above his brethren, to himself assuming 
Authority usurped, from God not given ! 
He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, 
Dominion absolute; that right we hold 



2 3 8 



PARADISE LOST 



By his donation: but man over men 6 9 

He made not lord — such title to himself 
Reserving-, human left from human free. 
But this Usurper his encroachment proud 
Stays not on Man; to God his Tower intends 
Siege and defiance. Wretched man ! what 

food 
Will he convey up thither, to sustain 
Himself and his rash army, where thin air 
Above the clouds will pine his entrails 

gross, 
And famish him of breath, if not of 

bread ? " 
To whom thus Michael : — " Justly thou 

abhorr'st 
That son, who on the quiet state of men 80 
Such trouble brought, aifecting to subdue 
Rational liberty; yet know withal, 
Since thy original lapse, true liberty 
Is lost, which always with right reason 

dwells 
Twinned, and from her hath no dividual 

being. 
Reason in Man obscured, or not obeyed, 
Immediately inordinate desires 
And upstart passions catch the govern- 
ment 
From Reason, and to servitude reduce 
Man, till, then free. Therefore, since he 

permits 90 

Within himself unworthy powers to reign 
Over free reason, God, in judgment just, 
Subjects him from without to violent lords, 
Who oft as undeservedly enthral 
His outward freedom. Tyranny must be, 
Though to the tyrant thereby no excuse. 
Yet sometimes nations will decline so low 
From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong, 
But justice and some fatal curse annexed, 
Deprives them of their outward liberty, 100 
Their inward lost: witness the irreverent 

son 
Of him who built the Ark, who, for the 

shame 
Done to his father, heard this heavy curse, 
Servant of servants, on his vicious race. 
Thus will this latter, as the former world, 
Still tend from bad to worse, till God at 

last, 
Wearied with their iniquities, withdraw 
His presence from among them, and avert 
His holy eyes, resolving from thenceforth 
To leave them to their own polluted 

ways, 1 10 

And one peculiar nation to select 



From all the rest, of whom to be invoked — 
A nation from one faithful man to spring. 
Him on this side Euphrates yet residing, 
Bred up in idol-worship — Oh, that men 
(Canst thou believe ?) should be so stupid 

grown, 
While yet the patriarch lived who scaped 

the Flood, 
As to forsake the living God, and fall 
To worship their own work in wood and 

stone 
For gods ! — yet him God the Most High 

voutsafes 120 

To call by vision from his father's house, 
His kindred, and false gods, into a land 
Which he will shew him, and from him 

will raise 
A mighty nation, and upon him shower 
His benediction so that in his seed 
All nations shall be blest. He straight 



Not knowing to what land, yet firm believes. 
I see him, but thou canst not, with what 

faith 
He leaves his gods, his friends, and native 

soil, 
Ur of Chaldsea, passing now the ford 130 
To Harau — after him a cumbrous train 
Of herds and flocks, and numerous servi- 
tude — 
Not wandering poor, but trusting all his 

wealth 
With God, who called him, in a land un- 
known. 
Canaan he now attains; I see his tents 
Pitched about Sechem, and the neighbour- 
ing plain 
Of Moreh. There, by promise, he receives 
Gift to his progeny of all that land, 
From Hamath northward to the Desert 

south 
(Things by their names I call, though yet 
unnamed), 140 

From Hermon east to the great western 

sea; 
Mount Hermon, yonder sea, each place 

behold 
In prospect, as I point them: on the shore, 
Mount Carmel; here, the double-founted 

stream , 
Jordan, true limit eastward; but his sons 
Shall dwell to Senir, that long ridge of 

hills. 
This ponder, that all nations of the Earth 
Shall in his seed be blessed. By that seed 



BOOK TWELFTH 



239 



Is meant thy great Deliverer, who shall 

bruise 149 

The Serpent's head; whereof to thee anon 
Plainlier shall be revealed. This patriarch 

blest, 
Whom faithful Abraham due time shall 

call, 
A son, and of his son a grandchild, leaves, 
Like him in faith, in wisdom, and renown. 
The grandchild, with twelve sons increased, 

departs 
From Canaan to a land hereafter called 
Egypt, divided by the river Nile; 
See where it flows, disgorging at seven 

mouths 
Into the sea. To sojourn in that land 
He comes, invited by a younger son 160 

In time of dearth — a son whose worthy 

deeds 
Raise him to be the second in that realm 
Of Pharaoh. There he dies, and leaves his 

race 
Growing into a nation, and now grown 
Suspected to a sequent king, who seeks 
To stop their overgrowth, as inmate guests 
Too numerous ; whence of guests he makes 

them slaves 
Inhospitably, and kills their infant males: 
Till, by two brethren (those two brethren 

call 169 

Moses and Aaron) sent from God to claim 
His people from enthralment, they return, 
With glory and spoil, back to their promised 

land. 
But first the lawless tyrant, who denies 
To know their God, or message to regard, 
Must be compelled by signs and judgments 

dire: 
To blood unshed the rivers must be turned ; 
Frogs, lice, and flies must all his palace fill 
With loathed intrusion, and fill all the land; 
His cattle must of rot and murrain die; 179 
Botches and blains must all his flesh imboss, 
And all his people; thunder mixed with 

hail, 
Hail mixed with fire, must rend the Egyp- 
tian sky, 
And wheel on the earth, devouring where it 

rolls; 
What it devours not, herb, or fruit, or grain, 
A darksome cloud of locusts swarming 

down 
Must eat, and on the ground leave nothing 

green; 
Darkness must overshadow all his bounds, 



Palpable darkness, and blot out three days; 
Last, with one midnight-stroke, all the first- 
born 
Of Egypt must lie dead. Thus with ten 
wounds 190 

The River-dragon tamed at length submits 
To let his sojourners depart, and oft 
Humbles his stubborn heart, but still as ice 
More hardened after thaw; till, in his rage 
Pursuing whom he late dismissed, the sea 
Swallows him with his host, but them lets 

pass, 
As on dry land, between two crystal walls, 
Awed by the rod of Moses so to stand 
Divided till his rescued gain their shore: 
Such wondrous power God to his Saint will 
lend, 200 

Though present in his Angel, who shall go 
Before them in a cloud, and pillar of fire — 
By day a cloud, by night a pillar of fire — 
To guide them in their journey, and remove 
Behind them, while the obddrate king pur- 
sues. 
All night he will pursue, but his approach 
Darkness defends between till morning- 
watch ; 
Then through the fiery pillar and the cloud 
God looking forth will trouble all his host, 
And craze their chariot- wheels: when, by 
command, 210 

Moses once more his potent rod extends 
Over the sea; the sea his rod obeys; 
On their imbattled ranks the waves return, 
And overwhelm their war. The race elect 
Safe towards Canaan, from the shore, ad- 
vance 
Through the wild Desert — not the readiest 

way, 
Lest, entering on the Canaanite alarmed, 
War terrify them inexpert, and fear 
Return them back to Egypt, choosing rather 
Inglorious life with servitude; for life 220 
To noble and ignoble is more sweet 
Untrained in arms, where rashness leads 

not on. 
This also shall they gain by their delay 
In the wide wilderness: there they shall 

found 
Their government, and their great Senate 

choose 
Through the twelve Tribes, to rule by laws 

ordained. 
God, from the Mount of Sinai, whose grey 

top 
Shall tremble, he descending, will himself, 



240 



PARADISE LOST 



In thunder, lightning, and loud trumpet's 

sound, 
Ordain them laws — part, such as ap- 
pertain 230 
To civil justice; part, religious rites 
Of sacrifice, informing them, by types 
And shadows, of that destined Seed to 

bruise 
The Serpent, by what means he shall 

achieve 
Mankind's deliverance. But the voice of 

God 
To mortal ear is dreadful: they beseech 
That Moses might report to them his will, 
And terror cease; he grants what they be- 
sought, 
Instructed that to God is no access 239 

Without Mediator, whose high office now 
Moses in figure bears, to introduce 
One greater, of whose day he shall fore- 
tell, 
And all the Prophets, in their age, the 

times 
Of great Messiah shall sing. Thus laws 

and rites 
Established, such delight hath God in men 
Obedient to his will that he voutsafes 
Among them to set up his Tabernacle — 
The Holy One with mortal men to dwell. 
By his prescript a sanctuary is framed 
Of cedar, overlaid with gold; therein 250 
An ark, and in the Ark his testimony, 
The records of his covenant; over these 
A mercy-seat of gold, between the wings 
Of two bright Cherubim; before him burn 
Seven lamps, as in a zodiac representing 
The heavenly fires. Over the tent a cloud 
Shall rest by day, a fiery gleam by night, 
Save when they journey; and at length 

they come, 
Conducted by his Angel, to the land 
Promised to Abraham and his seed. The 
rest 260 

Were long to tell — how many battles 

fought; 
How many kings destroyed, and kingdoms 

won; 
Or how the sun shall in mid-heaven stand 

still 
A day entire, and night's due course ad- 
journ, 
Man's voice commanding, ' Sun, in Gibeon 

stand, 
And thou, Moon, in the vale of Aialon, 
Till Israel overcome ! ' — so call the third 



From Abraham, son of Isaac, and from him 
His whole descent, who thus shall Canaan 

win." 
Here Adam interposed: — "0 sent from 

Heaven, 270 

Enlightener of my darkness, gracious 

things 
Thou hast revealed, those chiefly which 

concern 
Just Abraham and his seed. Now first I find 
Mine eyes true opening, and my heart 

much eased, 
Erewhile perplexed with thoughts what 

would become 
Of me and all mankind; but now I see 
His day, in whom all nations shall be 

blest — 
Favour unmerited by me, who sought 
Forbidden knowledge by forbidden means. 
This yet I apprehend not — why to those 
Among whom God will deign to dwell on 

Earth 281 

So many and so various laws are given. 
So many laws argue so many sins 
Among them; how can God with such re- 
side ? " 
To whom thus Michael: — "Doubt not 

but that sin 
Will reign among them, as of thee begot; 
And therefore was law given them, to 

evince 
Their natural pravity, by stirring up 
Sin against Law to fight, that, when they 

see 
Law can discover sin, but not remove, 290 
Save by those shadowy expiations weak, 
The blood of bulls and goats, they may 

conclude 
Some blood more precious must be paid for 

Man, 
Just for unjust, that in such righteousness, 
To them by faith imputed, they may find 
Justification towards God, and peace 
Of conscience, which the law by ceremonies 
Cannot appease, nor man the moral part 
Perform, and not performing cannot live. 
So Law appears imperfect, and but given 
With purpose to resign them, in full time, 
Up to a better covenant, disciplined 302 

From shadowy types to truth, from flesh to 

spirit, 
From imposition of strict laws to free 
Acceptance of large grace, from servile 

fear 
To filial, works of law to works of faith. 



BOOK TWELFTH 



24] 



And therefore shall not Moses, though of 

God 
Highly beloved, being but the minister 
Of Law, his people into Canaan lead; 
But Joshua, whom the Gentiles Jesus call, 
His name and office bearing who shall 
quell 311 

The adversary Serpent, and bring back 
Through the world's wilderness long- wan- 
dered Man 
Safe to eternal Paradise of rest. 
Meanwhile they, in their earthly Canaan 

placed, 
Long time shall dwell and prosper, but 

when sins 
National interrupt their public peace, 
Provoking God to raise them enemies — 
From whom as oft he saves them penitent, 
By Judges first, then under Kings; of 
whom 320 

The second, both for piety renowned 
And puissant deeds, a promise shall re- 
ceive 
Irrevocable, that his regal throne 
For ever shall endure. The like shall sing 
All Prophecy — that of the royal stock 
Of David (so I name this king) shall rise 
A son, the Woman's Seed to thee fore- 
told, 
Foretold to Abraham as in whom shall 

trust 
All nations, and to kings foretold of kings 
The last, for of his reign shall be no end. 
But first a long succession must ensue; 331 
And his next son, for wealth and wisdom 

famed, 
The clouded Ark of God, till then in tents 
Wandering, shall in a glorious Temple en- 
shrine. 
Such follow him as shall be registered 
Part good, part bad; of bad the longer 

scroll: 
Whose foul idolatries and other faults, 
Heaped to the popular sum, will so incense 
God, as to leave them, and expose their 

land, 
Their city, his Temple, and his holy Ark, 
With all his sacred things, a scorn and 
prey 341 

To that proud city whose high walls thou 

saw'st 
Left in confusion, Babylon thence called. 
There in captivity he lets them dwell 
The space of seventy years; then brings 
them back, 



Remembering mercy, and his covenant 

sworn 
To David, stablished as the days of Hea- 
ven. 
Returned from Babylon by leave of kings, 
Their lords, whom God disposed, the house 

of God 
They first re-edify, and for a while 350 

In mean estate live moderate, till, grown 
In wealth and multitude, factious they 

grow. 
But first among the priests dissension 

springs — 
Men who attend the altar, and should most 
Endeavour peace: their strife pollution 

brings 
Upon the Temple itself; at last they seize 
The sceptre, and regard not David's sons; 
Then lose it to a stranger, that the true 
Anointed King Messiah might be born 
Barred of his right. Yet at his birth a 

Star, 360 

Unseen before in heaven, proclaims him 

come, 
And guides the eastern sages, who inquire 
His place, to offer incense, myrrh, and 

gold: 
His place of birth a solemn Angel tells 
To simple shepherds, keeping watch by 

night; 
They gladly thither haste, and by a quire 
Of squadroned Angels hear his carol sung. 
A Virgin is his mother, but his sire 
The Power of the Most High. He shall 

ascend 
The throne hereditary, and bound his reign 
With Earth's wide bounds, his glory with 

the Heavens." 371 

He ceased, discerning Adam with such 

joy 
Surcharged as had, like grief, been dewed 

in tears, 
Without the vent of words; which these he 

breathed: — 
" O prophet of glad tidings, finisher 
Of utmost hope ! now clear I understand 
What oft my steadiest thoughts have 

searched in vain — 
Why our great Expectation should be 

called 
The Seed of Woman. Virgin Mother, hail ! 
High in the love of Heaven, yet from my 

loins 380 

Thou shalt proceed, and from thy womb 

the Son 



242 



PARADISE LOST 



Of God Most High; so God with Man 

unites. 
Needs must the Serpent now his capital 

bruise 
Expect with mortal pain. Say where and 

when 
Their fight, what stroke shall bruise the 

Victor's heel." 
To whom thus Michael : — " Dream not 

of their fight 
As of a duel, or the local wounds 
Of head or heel. Not therefore joins the 

Son 
Manhood to Godhead, with more strength 

to foil 
Thy enemy; nor so is overcome 390 

Satan, whose fall from Heaven, a deadlier 

bruise, 
Disabled not to give thee thy death's wound; 
Which he who comes thy Saviour shall re- 
cure, 
Not by destroying Satan, but his works 
In thee and in thy seed. Nor can this be, 
But by fulfilling that which thou didst 

want, 
Obedience to the law of God, imposed 
On penalty of death, and suffering death, 
The penalty to thy transgression due, 
And due to theirs which out of thine will 

grow: 400 

So only can high justice rest appaid. 
The Law of God exact he shall fulfil 
Both by obedience and by love, though 

love 
Alone fulfil the Law; thy punishment 
He shall endure, by coming in the flesh 
To a reproachful life and cursed death, 
Proclaiming life to all who shall believe 
In his redemption, and that his obedience 
Imputed becomes theirs by faith — his 

merits 
To save them, not their own, though legal, 

works. 410 

For this he shall live hated, be blasphemed, 
Seized on by force, judged, and to death 

condemned 
A shameful and accursed, nailed to the 

Cross 
By his own nation, slain for bringing life ; 
But to the cross he nails thy enemies — 
The Law that is against thee, and the sins 
Of all mankind, with him there crucified, 
Never to hurt them more who rightly trust 
In this his satisfaction. So he dies, 
But soon revives ; Death over him no power 



Shall long usurp. Ere the third dawning 

light 42i 

Return, the stars of morn shall see him rise 

Out of his grave, fresh as the dawning 

light, 
Thy ransom paid, which Man from Death 

redeems — 
His death for Man, as many as offered life 
Neglect not, and the benefit imbrace 
By faith not void of works. This godlike 

act 
Annuls thy doom, the death thou shouldst 

have died, 
In sin for ever lost from life; this act 
Shall bruise the head of Satan, crush his 
strength, 43 o 

Defeating Sin and Death, his two main 

arms, 
And fix far deeper in his head their stings 
Than temporal death shall bruise the Vic- 
tor's heel, 
Or theirs whom he redeems — a death like 

sleep, 
A gentle wafting to immortal life. 
Nor after resurrection shall he stay 
Longer on Earth than certain times to ap- 
pear 
To his disciples — men who in his life 
Still followed him; to them shall leave in 

charge 
To teach all nations what of him they 
learned 440 

And his salvation, them who shall believe 
Baptizing in the profluent stream — the 

sign 
Of washing them from guilt of sin to life 
Pure, and in mind prepared, if so befall, 
For death like that which the Redeemer 

died. 
All nations they shall teach; for from that 

day 
Not only to the sons of Abraham's loins 
Salvation shall be preached, but to the sons 
Of Abraham's faith wherever through the 

world; 
So in his seed all nations shall be blest. 450 
Then to the Heaven of Heavens he shall 

ascend 
With victory, triumphing through the air 
Over his foes and thine; there shall sur- 
prise 
The Serpent, Prince of Air, and drag in 

chains 
Through all his realm, and there con- 
founded leave; 



BOOK TWELFTH 



243 



Then enter into glory, and resume 

His seat at God's right hand, exalted high 

Above all names in Heaven; and thence 

shall come, 
When this World's dissolution shall be ripe, 
With glory and power, to judge both quick 

and dead — 460 

To judge the unfaithful dead, but to re- 
ward 
His faithful, and receive them into bliss, 
Whether in Heaven or Earth; for then the 

Earth 
Shall all be Paradise, far happier place 
Than this of Eden, and far happier days." 
So spake the Archangel Michael; then 

paused, 
As at the World's great period; and our 

Sire, 
Replete with joy and wonder, thus re- 
plied : — 
" O Goodness infinite, Goodness im- 
mense, 
That all this good of evil shall produce, 470 
And evil turn to good — more wonderful 
Than that which by creation first brought 

forth 
Light out of darkness ! Full of doubt I 

stand, 
Whether I should repent me now of sin 
By me done and occasioned, or rejoice 
Much more that much more good thereof 

shall spring — 
To God more glory, more good- will to men 
From God — and over wrauth grace shall 

abound. 
But say, if our Deliverer up to Heaven 
Must reascend, what will betide the few, 480 
His faithful, left among the unfaithful 

herd, 
The enemies of truth. Who then shall 

guide 
His people, who defend ? Will they not 

deal 
Worse with his followers than with him 

they dealt?" 
"Be sure they will," said the Angel; 

" but from Heaven 
He to his own a Comforter will send, 
The promise of the Father, who shall dwell, 
His Spirit, within them, and the law of 

faith 
Working through love upon their hearts 

shall write, 
To guide them in all truth, and also arm 490 
With spiritual armour,- able to resist 



Satan's assaults, and quench his fiery 

darts — 
What man can do against them not afraid, 
Though to the death; against such cruelties 
With inward consolations recompensed, 
And oft supported so as shall amaze 
Their proudest persecutors. For the Spirit, 
Poured first on his Apostles, whom he sends 
To evangelize the nations, then on all 
Baptized, shall them with wondrous gifts 

endue 500 

To speak all tongues, and do all miracles, 
As did their Lord before them. Thus they 

win 
Great numbers of each nation to receive 
With joy the tidings brought from Heaven: 

at length, 
Their ministry performed, and race well 

run, 
Their doctrine and their story written left, 
They die; but in their room, as they fore- 
warn, 
Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous 

wolves, 
Who all the sacred mysteries of Heaven 
To their own vile advantages shall turn 510 
Of lucre and ambition, and the truth 
With superstitions and traditions taint, 
Left only in those written Records pure, 
Though not but by the Spirit understood. 
Then shall they seek to avail themselves of 

names, 
Places, and titles, and with these to join 
Secular power, though feigning still to act 
By spiritual; to themselves appropriating 
The Spirit of God, promised alike and 

given 
To all believers; and, from that pretence, 520 
Spiritual laws by carnal power shall force 
On every conscience — laws which none 

shall find 
Left them enrowled, or what the Spirit 

within 
Shall on the heart engrave. What will 

they then 
But force the Spirit of Grace itself, and 

bind 
His consort, Liberty ? what but unbuild 
His living temples, built by faith to stand — 
Their own faith, not another's ? for, on 

Earth, 
Who against faith and conscience can be 

heard 
Infallible? Yet many will presume: 530 
Whence heavy persecution shall arise 



244 



PARADISE LOST 



On all who in the worship persevere 

Of Spirit and Truth; the rest, far greater 

part, 
Will deem in outward rites and specious 

forms 
Religion satisfied ; Truth shall retire 
Bestuck with slanderous darts, and works 

of Faith 
Rarely be found. So shall the World go 

on, 
To good malignant, to bad men benign, 
Under her own weight groaning, till the 

day 
Appear of respiration to the just 540 

And vengeance to the wicked, at return 
Of Him so lately promised to thy aid, 
The Woman's Seed — obscurely then fore- 
told, 
Now amplier known thy Saviour and thy 

Lord; 
Last in the clouds from Heaven to be re- 
vealed 
In glory of the Father, to dissolve 
Satan with his perverted World; then raise 
From the conflagrant mass, purged and re- 
fined, 
New Heavens, new Earth, Ages of endless 

date 
Founded in righteousness and peace and 
love, 550 

To bring forth fruits, joy and eternal bliss." 
He ended; and thus Adam last re- 
plied: — 
" How soon hath thy prediction, Seer blest, 
Measured this transient World, the race of 

Time, 
Till Time stand fixed! Beyond is all 

abyss — 
Eternity, whose end no eye can reach. 
Greatly instructed I shall hence depart, 
Greatly in peace of thought, and have my 

fill 
Of knowledge, what this vessel can con- 
tain ; 
Beyond which was my folly to aspire. 560 
Henceforth I learn that to obey is best, 
And love with fear the only God, to walk 
As in his presence, ever to observe 
His providence, and on him sole depend, 
Merciful over all his works, with good 
Still overcoming evil, and by small 
Accomplishing great things — by things 

, deemed weak 
Subverting worldly-strong, and worldly- 



By simply meek; that suffering for Truth's 

sake 
Is fortitude to highest victory, 57 o 

And to the faithful death the gate of life — 
Taught this by his example whom I now 
Acknowledge my Redeemer ever blest." 
To whom thus also the Angel last re- 
plied: — 
" This having learned, thou hast attained 

the sum 
Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the 

stars 
Thou knew'st by name, and all the ethereal 

powers, 
All secrets of the Deep, all Nature's works, 

sea, 579 

And all the riches of this worhi enjoy'dst, 
v And all the rule, one empire, f Only add 
\ Deeds to thy knowledge ansfsverable.; add 

faith ; 
.Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love, 
By name to come called Charity, the sflul 
Of all the rest: then wilt thou nofHtas 
loth 1 

To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess ^ 
; A Paradise within thee, happier far^ ' 
Let us descend now, therefore, from this top 
Of speculation^ffor the hour precise 
Exacts our parting hence ; and, see ! the 
guards, 590 

By me encamped on yonder hill, expect 
Their motion, at whose front a flaming 

sword, 
In signal of remove, waves fiercely round. 
We may no longer stay. Go, waken Eve; 
Her also I with gentle dreams have calmed, 
Portending good, and all her spirits com- 
posed 
To meek submission: thou, at season fit, 
Let her with thee partake what thou hast 

heard — 
Chiefly what may concern her faith to know, 
The great deliverance by her seed to 
come 600 

(For by the Woman's Seed) on all man- 
kind — 
That ye may live, which will be many 

days, 
Both in one faith unanimous ; though sad 
With cause for evils past, yet much more 

cheered 
With meditation on the happy end." 

He ended, and they both descend the hill. 
Descended, Adam to the bower where Eve 



BOOK TWELFTH 



! 45 



Lay sleeping ran before, but found her 

waked ; 
And thus with words not sad she him re- 
ceived: — 
"Whence thou return'st and whither 
went'st I know ; 610 

For God is also in sleep, and dreams ad- 
vise, 
Which he hath sent propitious, some great 

good 
Presaging, since, with sorrow and heart's 

distress 
Wearied, I fell asleep. But now lead on; 
In me is no delay; with thee to go 
Is to stay here; without thee here to stay 
Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me 
Art all things under Heaven, all places 

thou, 
Who for my wilful crime art banished 

hence. 
This further consolation yet secure 620 

I carry hence: though all by me is lost, 
Such favour I unworthy am voutsafed, 
By me the Promised Seed shall all restore." 
So spake our mother Eve; and Adam 
heard 
Well pleased, but answered not; for now| 

too nigh 
The Archangel stood, and from the other 

hill 
To their fixed station, all in bright array, 
The Cherubim descended, on the ground 
Gliding metdorous, as evening mist 



Risen from a river o'er the marish glides, 
And gathers ground fast at the labourer's 

heel 63 1 

Homeward returning. High in front ad- 
vanced, 
The brandished sword of God before them 

blazed, 
Fierce as a comet; which with torrid heat, 
And vapour as the Libyan air adust, 
Began to parch that temperate clime; 

whereat 
In either hand the hastening Angel caught 
Our lingering Parents, and to the eastern 

gate 
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast 
To the subjected plain — then disap- 
peared. 640 
They, looking back, all the eastern side 

beheld 
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, 
Waved over by that flaming brand; the 

gate 
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery 

arms. 
Some natural tears they dropped, but 

wiped them soon; 
The world was all before them, where 

choose 
Their place of rest, arid Providence their 

gui de, _J 
They, hancf in hand, with wandering steps 

and slow, 
Through Eden took their solitary way. 





PARADISE REGAINED 

1665-1667 



PARADISE REGAINED 






Among the jottings which Milton made 
in 1640-41 of possible subjects for poems, 
were several from the life of Christ, such 
as Christ Born, Christ Bound, Christ Cruci- 
fied, and Christ Risen. He contemplated 
also a drama dealing with the agony in the 
garden, under the title Christus Patiens, 
suggested by Hugo Grotius's drama of the 
same name. Although the subject of Para- 
dise Regained, the temptation in the Wilder- 
ness, was suggested by Ellwood's chance 
remark in returning the manuscript of Para- 
dise Lost, the lesser poem was doubtless a 
result of a long period of thought, though 
of a less conscious and centred kind than 
evolved Paradise Lost. Milton's long brood- 
ing, during the composition of Paradise 
Lost, on the subject of the origin of evil and 
the fall of man, included by implication 
much reflection on the final triumph of 
good and the reinstatement of fallen hu- 
manity in its favored station. The very 
fact that his thought on these subjects was 
conventional, and straitly bound by scrip- 
tural authority, imposed upon him all the 
more imperatively the need of rounding out 
the system which Paradise Lost had left 
incomplete. It is almost safe to say, there- 
fore, that even without the young Quaker's 
" pleasant " hint, Milton would sooner or 
later have felt the need of supplementing 
the story of the first temptation with that 
of the second, in order to close the circle 
of his theology. 

Paradise Regained is, then, so far as its 
matter goes, a continuation of Paradise 
Lost) but in point of manner it is remark- 
ably different, — so different, indeed, that 
there seems some ground for refusing to it 
the title of epic altogether. In his Reason 
of Church Government, Milton speaks of 



" that Epic form, whereof the two Poems 
of Homer and those other two of Virgil and 
Tasso, are a diffuse, and the Book of Job a 
brief, model," and it has been suggested 
that in Paradise Regained he essayed the 
" brief " epic, modelling it more or less 
consciously upon the precedent of Job. 
Certainly the form of the English and 
the Hebrew poem is similar. In the lat- 
ter, after a short narrative introduction 
Job begins a series of colloquies with his 
friends and with the Lord which occupy 
the entire remainder of the poem except 
the short narrative conclusion. So in Par- 
adise Regained, the body of the poem is 
dialogue, with narrative introduction and 
conclusion, and with narrative interludes 
between the various stages of the tempta- 
tion. Strictly speaking, therefore, both 
poems are disguised dramas, the epic ele- 
ment being little else than expanded stage 
directions. In both, too, the drama is a 
spiritual one ; the scene of conflict if in the 
hearts and minds of the protagonists, and 
the external world exists only as picturesque 
accessory and illustration. 

The parallel is a damaging one for Mil- 
ton, for it throws into relief his fatal fault 
in dealing with biblical material, — lack of 
simplicity. His account of the Creation in 
the eighth book of Paradise Lost shows this 
fault most glaringly. Milton's Creation is 
an elaborate function, the inauguration of 
a great celestial show ; it has none of the 
simple awe, the lonely majesty, of Genesis, 
whereby we are made to feel the vague 
stirring of the Abyss pregnant with mortal 
shapes and passions. The touching anthro- 
pomorphism of the Hebrew God and the 
Hebrew Heaven too often becomes gro- 
tesque under his elaborating hand. Like- 



249 



25° 



PARADISE REGAINED 



wise, in Paradise Regained, the story of 
Christ's hunger and temptation in the wil- 
derness, so strangely moving in the bare 
apostolic account, suffers a change into 
something ample and grandiose almost be- 
yond recognition. The trial of hunger, in 
which Christ is bidden to turn the stone 
into bread, occupies in the original but two 
short verses. Upon the working up of this 
" simple passage of few notes ' ' Milton ex- 
hausts the resources of his orchestration. 
He pictures forth a feast to tempt a prince 
in the Arabian Nights. In the trial of am- 
bition, again, Milton transmutes the single 
phrase " the kingdoms of the world and 
the glory of them " into a vast panorama 
of Persian and Roman imperialism, and 
enlarges the theme still more by including 
in his picture Athens, as a type of the im- 
perialism of mind. Out of the apostle's 
rude drawing he makes a mighty tapestry 
heavy with threads of gold, gorgeous and 
sombre with far-brought dyes. Here, as 
elsewhere, he shows the stamp of the later 
Italian Renaissance. He works over the 
earnest meagre traits of the apostolic story 
in a manner at once massive and rococo, 
just as the later Italian painters were wont 
to treat the subjects which they drew from 
the same source. And to match this physi- 
cal elaboration in the setting of the dialogue, 
there is an intellectual elaboration in the 
dialogue itself, a parry and thrust of de- 
bate, a refinement of forensic device, which 
is thoroughly unbiblical, yet admirably in 
harmony with Milton's whole conception 
of his artistic problem. 

The tenable objection against this elabo- 
ration is not that it falsifies the original, 
(for every artist must be allowed to trans- 
late his material into his own idiom, and 
Milton's idiom happened to be magnilo- 
quent and orotund,) but that it lowers the 
moral tension of the original. Satan's sug- 
gestion to Christ, that he shall turn the 
stone into bread, is a subtle temptation, 
appealing at once to physical distress and 
to reason. The very simplicity of the thing 



demanded, the naturalness of the relief 
offered, gives the words a devilish insinu- 
ation. One holds one's breath before the 
outcome. But when Satan falls back upon 
steaming trenchers, cakes and dainties, sil- 
ver plate and dance-girls, to accomplish 
his end, the moral tension disappears. The 
temptation is one to conquer a school-boy 
or a prodigal. It is strange that Milton, 
ascetic and arch-idealist, should have fallen 
into such an error. For it is a moral error, 
though springing from an artistic source. 
The " motivation " of the poem is injured 
by it ; the spiritual intensity falls away in 
exact proportion as the decorative riclmess 
increases. The spiritual defect of Paradise 
Lost lies in the fact that both Satan's sin 
and Adam's are offences against positive 
edicts, not essential moral laws such as 
appeal to the universal conscience. The 
spiritual defect of Paradise Regained lies 
in the fact that, given Christ's nature, the 
temptations are not tempting. 

And just as the elaboration of the physi- 
cal accessories lowers the moral tension, so 
does the elaboration of the argument lower 
the imaginative tension. Between Satan's 
words in the scriptural account, " To whom- 
soever I will I will give it. If thou there- 
fore wilt worship me, all shall be thine," 
and Christ's reply, "It is written, Thou 
shalt worship the Lord thy God," the mind 
hangs in awe-struck suspense. But when 
the Christ of Milton's poem begins to argue 
the point we lose interest. The air is no 
longer tense with the strain of mute deci- 
sions. In the flow of words the sense of 
spiritual catastrophe evaporates ; we are 
in a world of second thoughts, and can 
wait. Milton the controversialist has once 
more defeated Milton the artist. 

But Paradise Lost is, after all, a great 
work of art, and it is great by virtue of the 
inexplicable quality of voice which must so 
often be Milton's sufficient justification. 
This force of style is most obviously shown 
in the gorgeous descriptive interludes of 
the poem ; but much more noteworthy is 



PARADISE REGAINED 



25 1 



the way in which it plays over and through 
the grey dialogue. Few persons can read 
this dialogue without a sense of the tire- 
someness of its matter ; no one without a 
feeling for style can read it without a convic- 
tion — an almost vexing conviction under 
the circumstances — that every word pro- 
ceeds out of the mouth of a poet, " skilled 
to sing of time and eternity." This, how- 
ever, is merely to say that the style of 
Paradise Regained is Miltonic ; we must 
not leave out of the account the specific 
difference which marks off the style of this 
poem from that of Paradise Lost. The dif- 
ference is remarkable. Paradise Lost leaves 
as a whole an impression of tireless energy. 
The rhythms, for all their massiveness, are 
buoyant ; the mighty periods march with 
lifted front and banners streaming. Par- 
adise Regained leaves an impression of 
strength overborne by a weight of weari- 
ness. The language, with the exception 
of two or three purple patches, is neutral 
tinted, and the rhythms, though unconquer- 
able as of old, move heavily, under some 
ghostly burden. The whole effect of the 
poem is sombre, nor does the sombreness 
seem to proceed from the subject, but to 
be suspended cloud-like over it. The effect 
is, in other words, due to a temperamental 
condition on Milton's part, subtly finding 
expression in style. 

And it is this sombreness of style, half- 
way between the martial elateness of Par- 
adise Lost and the profound depression of 
Samson Agonistes, which redeems the short- 
comings of Paradise Regained, giving dig- 
nity to the dialogue, and majesty to the 
interludes. What is meant will be made 
clear by comparing Giles Fletcher's treat- 
ment of the Temptation in his epic of 
Christ's Victory, — a poem from which Mil- 
ton drew valuable hints. Fletcher, a true 
Spenserian; elaborates his subject with 
every artifice of decoration and amplifica- 
tion, and thus sins against the sincerity of 
the biblical story as grievously as does 
Milton : but unlike Milton he fails to re- 



deem his treatment by throwing the whole 
elaborate picture into shadow. His descrip- 
tions are open-hearted as a child's, and his 
poem, for all its lovableness, remains queer- 
ly vacant of the tragic sense. Milton, hav- 
ing lost the tragic sense by elaboration, pro- 
ceeds to reinvoke it mysteriously by means 
of a shadowed, tragic style. 

As Lycidas stands between Milton's youth 
and his manhood and gathers to itself the 
grace of the one and the strenuousness of 
the other, so Paradise Regained stands be- 
tween his manhood and his old age. His 
poetic maturity is past ; the autumnal touch 
is everywhere; the picture settles rapidly 
into brown and grey. But here and there 
the frost has come only to glorify with 
scarlet and purple and bronze. Indeed, 
there occasionally falls across the page a 
ray of delicate light like spring: — 

" Faery damsels met in forest wide 
By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, 
Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore." — 

In this poem, too, the two men of whom 
Milton was composed find their clear ex- 
pression in style. Occasionally we come 
upon a line which shows the poet pure : — 

" So they in heaven their odes and vigils tuned " 

or: — 

" Morning fair 
Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice grey " 

or, incomparable for visual truth : — 

" The field all iron east a gleaming brown " — 

then without warning the poet merges into 
the dialectician who uses the poet for a 
mouthpiece : — 

H Saidst thou not that to all things I had right ? 
And who withholds my power that right to use ? 
Shall I receive by gifts what of my own, 
When and where likes me best, I can com- 
mand ? " 

Less perhaps than any other work of 
Milton's can Paradise Regained stand the 
test to which modern criticism is more and 
more prone to subject the literature of the 
past. When we cast aside conventions and 
ask the simple human question, " Does this 



252 



PARADISE REGAINED 



poem interest and charm me ? " the answer 
with regard to Paradise Regained will be 
less ready than that with regard to any- 
other of the poems. The early poems, the 
sonnets, and Samson, rest on more perma- 
nent human foundations than either of the 
epics, and Paradise Regained has not the 
great creative impulse behind it which saves 
Paradise Lost. The most certain pleasure 
will be got from it by casting aside pre- 
conceptions and comparisons, by refraining 



from a too rigid application of standards, 
and looking at it as one looks at an old 
tapestry like those at Dresden of Raphael's 
designing. Here and there patches of it 
are faded ; not a few of its admired adorn- 
ments seem now odd and rococo; some of 
its lines, that once were majestic, are now 
only stiff; but taken all in all it is still a 
fine work, massive and grave, to which age 
has added perhaps quite as much as it has 
taken away. 



THE FIRST BOOK 

I, who erewhile the happy Garden sung 
By one man's disobedience lost, now sing 
Recovered Paradise to all mankind, 
By one man's firm obedience fully tried 
Through all temptation, and the Tempter 

foiled 
In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed, 
And Eden raised in the waste Wilderness. 
Thou Spirit, who led'st this glorious Ere- 
mite 
Into the desert, his victorious field 
Against the spiritual foe, and brought'st 
him thence 10 

By proof the undoubted Son of God, in- 
spire, 
As thou art wont, my prompted song, else 

mute, 
And bear through highth or depth of Na- 
ture's bounds, 
With prosperous wing full summed, to tell 

of deeds 
Above heroic, though in secret done, 
And unrecorded left through many an age: 
Worthy to have not remained so long un- 
sung. 
Now had the great Proclaimer, with a 
/ voice 
More awful than the sound of trumpet, 

cried 
Repentance, and Heaven's kingdom nigh at 
hand 20 

To all baptized. To his great baptism 

flocked 
With awe the regions round, and with them 

came 
From Nazareth the son of Joseph deemed 
To the flood Jordan — came as then obscure, 
Unmarked, unknown. But him the Bap- 
tist soon 



Descried, divinely warned, and witness 

bore 
As to his worthier, and would have resigned 
To him his heavenly office. Nor was long 
His witness unconfirmed: on him baptized 
Heaven opened, and in likeness of a Dove 30 
The Spirit descended, while the Father's 

voice 
From Heaven pronounced him his beloved 

Son. 
That heard the Adversary, who, roving 

still 
About the world, at that assembly famed 
Would not be last, and, with the voice di- 
vine 
Nigh thunder-struck, the exalted man to 

whom 
Such high attest was given a while sur- 
veyed 
With wonder; then, with envy fraught and 

rage, 
Flies to his place, nor rests, but in mid air 
To council summons all his mighty Peers, 
Within thick clouds and dark tenfold in- 
volved, 4 i 
A gloomy consistory; and them amidst, 
With looks aghast and sad, he thus be- 



" O ancient Powers of Air and this wide 

World 
(For much more willingly I mention Air, 
This our old conquest, than remember Hell, 
Our hated habitation), well ye know 
How many ages, as the years of men, 
This Universe we have possessed, and ruled 
In manner at our will the affairs of Earth, 
Since Adam and his facile consort Eve 51 
Lost Paradise, deceived by me, though 

since 
With dread attending when that fatal 

wound 



BOOK FIRST 



2 53 



Shall be inflicted by the seed of Eve 
Upon my head. Long the decrees of 

Heaven 
Delay, for longest time to Him is short; 
And now, too soon for us, the circling hours 
This dreaded time have compassed, wherein 

we 
Must bide the stroke of that long-threat- 
ened wound 
(At least, if so we can, and by the head 60 
Broken be not intended all our power 
To be infringed, our freedom and our be- 
ing 
In this fair empire won of Earth and Air) — 
For this ill news I bring: The Woman's 

Seed, 
Destined to this, is late of woman born. 
His birth to our just fear gave no small 

cause ; 
But his growth now to youth's full flower, 

displaying 
All virtue, grace and wisdom to achieve 
Things highest, greatest, multiplies my fear. 
Before him a great Prophet, to proclaim 70 
His coming, is sent harbinger, who all 
Invites, and in the consecrated stream 
Pretends to wash off sin, and fit them so 
Purified to receive him pure, or rather 
To do him honour as their King. All come, 
And he himself among them was baptized — 
Not thence to be more pure, but to receive 
The testimony of Heaven, that who he is 
Thenceforth the nations may not doubt. I 

saw 
The Pro^et do him reverence ; on him, ris- 
ing 80 
Out of the water, Heaven above the clouds 
Unfold her crystal doors; thence on his 

head 
A perf et Dove descend (whate'er it meant) ; 
And out of Heaven the sovraign voice I 

heard, 
4 This is my Son beloved, — in him am 

pleased.' 
His mother, then, is mortal, but his Sire 
He who obtains the monarchy of Heaven; 
And what will He not do to advance his 

Son? 

His first-begot we know, and sore have felt, 

When his fierce thunder drove us to the 

Deep; 90 

Who this is we must learn, for Man he 

seems 
In all his lineaments, though in his face 
The glimpses of his Father's glory shine. 



Ye see our danger on the utmost edge 
Of hazard, which admits no long debate, 
But must with something sudden be opposed 
(Not force, but well-couched fraud, well- 
woven snares), 
Ere in the head of nations he appear, 
Their king, their leader, and supreme on 

Earth. 
I, when no other durst, sole undertook 100 
The dismal expedition to find out 
And ruin Adam, and the exploit performed 
Successfully: a calmer voyage now 
Will waft me; and the way found prosper- 
ous once 
Induces best to hope of like success." 

He ended, and his words impression left 
Of much amazement to the infernal crew, 
Distracted and surprised with deep dismay 
At these sad tidings. But no time was 

then 
For long indulgence to their fears or 
grief: no 

Unanimous they all commit the care 
And management of this main enterprise 
To him, their great Dictator, whose attempt 
At first against mankind so well had 

thrived 
In Adam's overthrow, and led their march 
From Hell's deep-vaulted den to dwell in 

light, 
Regents, and potentates, and kings, yea 

gods, 
Of many a pleasant realm and province 

wide. 
So to the coast of Jordan he directs 
His easy steps, girded with snaky wiles, 120 
Where he might likeliest find this new-de- 
clared, 
This man of men, attested Son of God, 
Temptation and all guile on him to try — 
So to subvert whom he suspected raised 
To end his reign on Earth so long enjoyed: 
But, contrary, unweeting he fulfilled 
The purposed counsel, pre-ordained and 

fixed, 
Of the Most High, who, in full frequence 

bright 
Of Angels, thus to Gabriel smiling spake: — 
"Gabriel, this day, by proof, thou shalt 
behold, 130 

Thou and all Angels conversant on Earth 
With Man or men's affairs, how I begin 
To verify that solemn message late, 
On which I sent thee to the Virgin pure 
In Galilee, that she should bear a son, 



254 



PARADISE REGAINED 



Great in renown, and called the Son of 

God. 
Then told'st her, doubting how these things 

could be 
To her a virgin, that on her should come 
The Holy Ghost, and the power of the 

Highest 
O'ershadow her. This Man, born and now 

upgrown, 140 

To shew him worthy of his birth divine 
And high prediction, henceforth I expose 
To Satan; let him tempt, and now assay 
His utmost subtlety, because he boasts 
And vaunts of his great cunning to the 

throng 
Of his Apostasy. He might have learnt 
Less overweening, since he failed in Job, 
Whose constant perseverance overcame 
Whate'er his cruel malice could invent. 
He now shall know I can produce a man, 150 
Of female seed, far abler to resist 
All his solicitations, and at length 
All his vast force, and drive him back to 

t Hell — 
Winning by conquest what the first man 

lost 
By fallacy surprised. But first I mean 
To exercise him in the Wilderness; 
There he shall first lay down the rudiments 
Of his great warfare, ere I send him forth 
To conquer Sin and Death, the two grand 

foes. 
By humiliation and strong sufferance 160 
His weakness shall o'ercome Satanic 

strength, 
And all the world, and mass of sinful flesh; 
That all the Angels and sethereal Powers — 
They now, and men hereafter — may dis- 
cern 
From what consummate virtue I have 

chose 
This perfet man, by merit called my Son, 
To earn salvation for the sons of men." 
So spake the Eternal Father, and all 

Heaven 
Admiring stood a space ; then into hymns 
Burst forth, and in celestial measures 

moved, 170 

Circling the throne and singing, while the 

hand 
Sung with the voice, and this the argu- 
ment: — 
" Victory and triumph to the Son of God, 
Now entering his great duel, not of arms, 
But to vanquish by wisdom hellish wiles ! 



The Father knows the Son; therefore se- 
cure 
Ventures his filial virtue, though untried, 
Against whate'er may tempt, whate'er se- 
duce, 
Allure, or terrify, or undermine. 
Be frustrate, all ye stratagems of Hell, 180 
And, devilish machinations, come to 
nought ! " 
So they in Heaven their odes and vigils 
tuned. 
Meanwhile the Son of God, who yet some 

days 
Lodged in Bethabara, where John baptized, 
Musing and much revolving in his breast 
How best the mighty work he might be- 
gin 
Of Saviour to mankind, and which way 

first 
Publish his godlike office now mature, 
One day forth walked alone, the Spirit 

leading 
And his deep thoughts, the better to con- 
verse 190 
With solitude, till, far from track of men, 
Thought following thought, and step by 

step led on, 
He entered now the bordering Desert wild, 
And, with dark shades and rocks environed 

round, 
His holy meditations thus pursued: — 
"O what a multitude of thoughts at 
once 
Awakened in me swarm, while I consider 
What from within I feel myself, and hear 
What from without comes often to my ears, 
111 sorting with my present state com- 
pared ! 200 
When I was yet a child, no childish play 
To me was pleasing; all my mind was set 
Serious to learn and know, and thence to 

do, 
What might be public good; myself I 

thought 
Born to that end, born to promote all truth, 
All righteous things. Therefore, above my 

years, 
The Law of God I read, and found it 

sweet; 
Made it my whole delight, and in it grew 
To such perfection that, ere yet my age 
Had measured twice six years, at our great 
Feast 210 

I went into the Temple, there to hear 
The teachers of our Law, and to propose 



BOOK FIRST 



2 55 



What might improve my knowledge or 

their own, 
And was admired by all. Yet this not all 
To which my spirit aspired. Victorious 

deeds 
Flamed in my heart, heroic acts — one 

while 
To rescue Israel from the Roman yoke; 
Then to subdue and quell, o'er all the earth, 
Brute violence and proud tyrannic power, 
Till truth were freed, and equity re- 
stored: 220 
Yet held it more humane, more heavenly, 

first 
By winning words to conquer willing hearts, 
And make persuasion do the work of fear; 
At least to try, and teach the erring soul, 
Not wilfully misdoing, but unware 
Misled; the stubborn only to subdue. 
These growing thoughts my mother soon 

perceiving, 
By words at times cast forth, inly rejoiced, 
And said to me apart, ' High are thy 

thoughts, 
O Son ! but nourish them, and let them 

soar 230 

To what highth sacred virtue and true 

worth 
Can raise them, though above example 

high; 
By matchless deeds express thy matchless 

Sire. 
For know, thou art no son of mortal man; 
Though men esteem thee low of parentage, 
Thy Father is the Eternal King who rules 
All Heaven and Earth, Angels and sons of 

men. 
A messenger from God foretold thy birth 
Conceived in me a virgin; he foretold 
Thou shouldst be great, and sit on David's 

throne, 240 

And of thy kingdom there should be no end. 
At thy nativity a glorious quire 
Of Angels, in the fields of Bethlehem, sung 
To shepherds, watching at their folds by 

night, 
And told them the Messiah now was born, 
Where they might see him; and to thee 

they came, 
Directed to the manger where thou lay'st; 
For in the inn was left no better room. 
A Star, not seen before, in heaven appear- 
ing 
Guided the Wise Men thither from the 

East, 250 



To honour thee with incense, myrrh, and 

gold; 
By whose bright course led on they found 

the place, 
Affirming it thy star, new-graven in heaven, 
By which they knew thee King of Israel 

born. 
Just Simeon and prophetic Anna, warned 
By vision, found thee in the Temple, and 

spake, 
Before the altar and the vested priest, 
Like things of thee to all that present stood.' 
This having heard, straight I again re- 
volved 
The Law and Prophets, searching what was 

writ 260 

Concerning the Messiah, to our scribes 
Known partly, and soon found of whom 

they spake 
I am — this chiefly, that my way must lie 
Through many a hard assay, even to the 

death, 
Ere I the promised kingdom can attain, 
Or work redemption for mankind, whose 

sins' 
Full weight must be transferred upon my 

head. 
Yet, neither thus disheartened or dismayed, 
The time prefixed I waited; when behold 
The Baptist (of whose birth I oft had 

heard, 270 

Not knew by sight) now come, who was to 

come 
Before Messiah, and his way prepare ! 
I, as all others, to his baptism came, 
Which I believed was from above ; but 

he 
Straight knew me, and with loudest voice 

proclaimed 
Me him (for it was shewn him so from 

Heaven) — 
Me him whose harbinger he was; and first 
Refused on me his baptism to confer, 
As much his greater, and was hardly won. 
But, as I rose out of the laving stream, 280 
Heaven opened her eternal doors, from 

whence 
The Spirit descended on me like a Dove; 
And last, the sum of all, my Father's 

voice, 
Audibly heard from Heaven, pronounced 

me his, 
Me his beloved Son, in whom alone 
He was well pleased: by which I knew the 

time 



256 



PARADISE REGAINED 



Now full, that I no more should live ob- 
scure, 

But openly begin, as best becomes 

The authority which I derived from Hea- 
ven. 289 

And now by some strong motion I am led 

Into this wilderness; to what intent 

I learn not yet. Perhaps I need not know; 

For what concerns my knowledge God re- 
veals." 
So spake our Morning Star, then in his 
rise, 

And, looking round, on every side beheld 

A pathless desert, dusk with horrid shades. 

The way he came, not having marked re- 
turn, 

Was difficult, by human steps untrod ; 

And he still on was led, but with such 
thoughts 299 

Accompanied of things past and to come 

Lodged in his breast as well might recom- 
mend 

Such solitude before choicest society. 

Full forty days he passed — whether on 
hill 

Sometimes, anon in shady vale, each night 

Under the covert of some ancient oak 

Or cedar to defend him from the dew, 

Or harboured in one cave, is not revealed; 

Nor tasted human food, nor hunger felt, 

Till those days ended; hungered then at 
last 

Among wild beasts. They at his sight grew 
mild, 310 

Nor sleeping him nor waking harmed; his 
walk 

The fiery serpent fled and noxious worm; 

The lion and fierce tiger glared aloof. 

But now an aged man in rural weeds, 

Following, as seemed, the quest of some 
stray ewe, 

Or withered sticks to gather, which might 
serve 

Against a winter's day, when winds blow 
keen, 

To warm him wet returned from field at 
eve, 

He saw approach; who first with curious 
eye 

Perused him, then with words thus uttered 
spake: — 320 

" Sir, what ill chance hath brought thee 
to this place, 

So far from path or road of men, who pass 

In troop or caravan ? for single none 



Durst ever, who returned, and dropt not 

here 
His carcass, pined with hunger and with 

droughth. 
I ask the rather, and the more admire, 
For that to me thou seem'st the man whom 

late 
Our new baptizing Prophet at the ford 
Of Jordan honoured so, and called thee 

Son 
Of God. I saw and heard, for we some- 
times 330 
Who dwell this wild, constrained by want, 

come forth 
To town or village nigh (nighest is far), 
Where aught we hear, and curious are to 

hear, 
What happens new ; fame also finds us out." 
To whom the Son of God: —"Who 

brought me hither 
Will bring me hence; no other guide I 

seek." 
" By miracle he may," replied the swain; 
" What other way I see not; for we here 
Live on tough roots and stubs, to thirst in- 
ured 
More than the camel, and to drink go 

far — 340 

Men to much misery and hardship born. 
But, if thou be the Son of God, command 
That out of these hard stones be made thee 

bread ; 
So shalt thou save thyself, and us relieve 
With food, whereof we wretched seldom 

taste." 
He ended, and the Son of God replied: — 
" Think'st thou such force in bread? Is it 

not written 
(For I discern thee other than thou seem'st), 
Man lives not by bread only, but each word 
Proceeding from the mouth of God, who 

fed 350 

Our fathers here with manna .? In the 

Mount 
Moses was forty days, nor eat nor drank; 
And forty days Eliah without food 
Wandered this barren waste; the same I 

now. 
Why dost thou, then, suggest to me dis- 
trust, 
Knowing who I am, as I know who thou 

art ? " 
Whom thus answered the Arch-Fiend, 

now undisguised: — 
" 'T is true, I am that Spirit unfortunate 



BOOK FIRST 



257 



Who, leagued with millions more in rash 

revolt, 359 

Kept not my happy station, but was driven 

With them from bliss to the bottomless 

Deep — 
Yet to that hideous place not so confined 
By rigour unconniving but that oft, 
Leaving my dolorous prison, I enjoy 
Large liberty to round this globe of Earth, 
Or range in the Air; nor from the Heaven 

of Heavens 
Hath he excluded my resort sometimes. 
I came, among the Sons of God, when he 
Gave up into my hands Uzzean Job, 369 
To prove him, and illustrate his high worth; 
And, when to all his Angels he proposed 
To draw the proud king Ahab into fraud, 
That he might fall in Ramoth, they demur- 
ring, 
I undertook that office, and the tongues 
Of all his flattering prophets glibbed with 

lies 
To his destruction,- as I had in charge : 
For what he bids I do. Though I have lost 
Much lustre of my native brightness, lost 
To be beloved of God, I have not lost 379 
To love, at least contemplate and admire, 
What I see excellent in good, or fair, 
Or virtuous; I should so have lost all sense. 
What can be then less in me than desire 
To see thee and approach thee, whom I 

know 
Declared the Son of God, to hear attent 
Thy wisdom, and behold thy godlike deeds ? 
Men generally think me much a foe 
To all mankind. Why should I ? they to 

me 
Never did wrong or violence. By them 
I lost not what I lost; rather by them 390 
I gained what I have gained, and with them 

dwell 
Copartner in these regions of the World, 
If not disposer — lend them oft my aid, 
Oft my advice by presages and signs, 
And answers, oracles, portents, and dreams, 
Whereby they may direct their future life. 
Envy, they say, excites me, thus to gain 
Companions of my misery and woe ! 
At first it may be; but, long since with woe 
Nearer acquainted, now I feel by proof 400 
That fellowship in pain divides not smart, 
Nor lightens aught each man's peculiar 

load; 
Small consolation, then, were Man ad- 
joined. 



This wounds me most (what can it less ?) 
that Man, 

Man fallen, shall be restored, I never more." 
To whom our Saviour sternly thus re- 
plied: — 

" Deservedly thou griev'st, composed of 
lies 

From the beginning, and in lies wilt end, 

Who boast'st release from Hell, and leave 
to come 

Into the Heaven of Heavens. Thou com'st, 
indeed, 410 

As a poor miserable captive thrall 

Comes to the place where he before had sat 

Among the prime in splendour, now de- 
posed, 

Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned, 

A spectacle of ruin, or of scorn, 

To all the host of Heaven. The happy 
place 

Imparts to thee no happiness, no joy — 

Rather inflames thy torment, representing 

Lost bliss, to thee no more communicable; 

So never more in Hell than when in 
Heaven. 420 

But thou art serviceable to Heaven's King ! 

Wilt thou impute to obedience what thy 
fear 

Extorts, or pleasure to do ill excites ? 

What but thy malice moved thee to mis- 
deem 

Of righteous Job, then cruelly to afflict 
him 

With all inflictions ? but his patience won. 

The other service was thy chosen task, 

To be a liar in four hundred mouths; 

For lying is thy sustenance, thy food. 

Y?t thou pretend'st to truth ! all oracles 430 

By thee are given, and what confessed more 
true 

Among the nations ? That hath been thy 
craft, 

By mixing somewhat true to vent more lies. 

But what have been thy answers ? what 
but dark, 

Ambiguous, and with double sense de- 
luding, 

Which they who asked have seldom under- 
stood, 

And, not well understood, as good not 
known ? 

Who ever, by consulting at thy shrine, 

Returned the wiser, or the more instruct 439 

To fly or follow what concerned him most, 

And run not sooner to his fatal snare ? 



2 5 8 



PARADISE REGAINED 



For God hath justly given the nations up 
To thy delusions; justly, since they fell 
Idolatrous. But, when his purpose is 
Among them to declare his providence, 
To thee not known, whence hast thou then 

thy truth, 
But from him, or his Angels president 
In every province, who, themselves disdain- 
ing 
To approach thy temples, give thee in com- 
mand 449 
What, to the smallest tittle, thou shalt say 
To thy adorers ? Thou, with trembling 

fear, 
Or like a fawning parasite, obey'st; 
Then to thyself ascrib'st the truth foretold. 
But this thy glory shall be soon retrenched ; 
No more shalt thou by oracling abuse 
The Gentiles; henceforth oracles are ceased, 
And thou no more with pomp and sacrifice 
Shalt be enquired at Delphos or else- 
where — 
At least in vain, for they shall find thee 

mute. 
God hath now sent his living Oracle 460 
Into the world to teach his final will, 
And sends his Spirit of Truth henceforth to 

dwell 
In pious hearts, an inward oracle 
To all truth requisite for men to know." 
So spake our Saviour; but the subtle 
Fiend, 
Though inly stung with anger and disdain, 
Dissembled, and this answer smooth re- 
turned : — 
" Sharply thou hast insisted on rebuke, 
And urged me hard with doings which not 
will, 469 

But misery, hath wrested from me. Where 
Easily canst thou find one miserable, 
And not inforced oft-times to part from 
truth, 



If it may stand him more in stead to lie, 
Say and unsay, feign, flatter, or abjure ? 
But thou art placed above me; thou art 

Lord; 
From thee I can, and must, submiss, endure 
Check or reproof, and glad to scape so quit. 
Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to 

walk, 
Smooth on the tongue discoursed, pleasing 

to the ear, 
And tunable as sylvan pipe or song; 4S0 
What wonder, then, if I delight to hear 
Her dictates from thy mouth ? most men 

admire 
Virtue who follow not her lore. Permit me 
To hear thee when I come (since no man 

comes), 
And talk at least, though I despair to 

attain. 
Thy Father, who is holy, wise, and pure, 
Suffers the hypocrite or atheous priest 
To tread his sacred courts, and minister 
About his altar, handling holy things, 
Praying or vowing, and voutsafed his 

voice 490 

To Balaam reprobate, a prophet yet 
Inspired: disdain not such access to me." 
To whom our Saviour, with unaltered 

brow: — 
"Thy coming hither, though I know thy 

scope, 
I bid not, or forbid. Do as thou find'st 
Permission from above; thou canst not 

more." 
He added not; and Satan, bowing low 
His gray dissimulation, disappeared, 
Into thin air diffused : for now began 499 
Night with her sullen wing to double-shade 
The desert; fowls in their clay nests were 

couched ; 
And now wild beasts came forth the woods 

to roam. 



THE SECOND BOOK 

Meanwhile the new-baptized, who yet 

remained 
At Jordan with the Baptist, and had seen 
Him whom they heard so late expressly 

called 
Jesus Messiah, Son of God, declared, 
And on that high authority had believed, 
And with him talked, and with him lodged 

— I mean 



Andrew and Simon, famous after known, 
With others, though in Holy Writ not 

named — 
Now missing him, their joy so lately found, 
So lacely found and so abruptly gone, 10 
Began to doubt, and doubted many days, 
And, as the days increased, increased their 

doubt. 
Sometimes they thought he might be only 

shewn, 
And for a time caught up to God, as once 



BOOK SECOND 



2 59 



Moses was in the Mount and missing long, 
And the great Thisbite, who on fiery wheels 
Rode up to Heaven, yet once again to 

come. 
Therefore, as those young prophets then 

with care 
Sought lost Eliah, so in each place these 
Nigh to Bethabara — in Jericho 20 

The city of palms, iEnon, and Salem old, 
Machserus, and each town or city walled 
On this side the broad lake Genezaret, 
Or in Peraea — but returned in vain. 
Then on the bank of Jordan, by a creek, 
Where winds with reeds and osiers whis- 
pering play, 
Plain fishermen (no greater men them 

call), 
Close in a cottage low together got, 
Their unexpected loss and plaints out- 
breathed : — 
" Alas, from what high hope to what re- 
lapse 30 
Unlooked for are we fallen ! Our eyes be- 
held 
Messiah certainly now come, so long 
Expected of our fathers ; we have heard 
His words, his wisdom full of grace and 

truth. 
' Now, now, for sure, deliverance is at 

hand; 
The kingdom shall to Israel be restored: ' 
Thus we rejoiced, but soon our joy is 

turned 
Into perplexity and new amaze. 
For whither is he gone ? what accident 
Hath rapt him from us ? will he now re- 
tire 40 
After appearance, and again prolong 
Our expectation ? God of Israel, 
Send thy Messiah forth; the time is come. 
Behold the kings of the earth, how they 

oppress 
Thy Chosen, to what highth their power 

unjust 
They have exalted, and behind them cast 
All fear of Thee; arise, and vindicate 
Thy glory; free thy people from their 

yoke ! 
But let us wait; thus far He hath per- 
formed — 49 
Sent his Anointed, and to us revealed him 
By his great Prophet pointed at and shown 
In public, and with him we have conversed. 
Let us be glad of this, and all our fears 
Lay on his providence; He will not fail, 



Nor will withdraw him now, nor will re- 
call — 
Mock us with his blest sight, then snatch 

him hence: 
Soon we shall see our hope, our joy, re- 
turn." 
Thus they out of their plaints new hope 
resume 
To find whom at the first they found un- 
sought. 
But to his mother Mary, when she saw 60 
Others returned from baptism, not her 

Son, 
Nor left at Jordan tidings of him none, 
Within her breast though calm, her breast 

though pure, 
Motherly cares and fears got head, and 

raised 
Some troubled thoughts, which she in sighs 
thus clad : — 
" Oh, what avails me now that honour 
high, 
To have conceived of God, or that salute, 
' Hail, highly favoured, among women 

blest ! ' 
While I to sorrows am no less advanced, 
And fears as eminent above the lot 70 

Of other women, by the birth I bore: 
In such a season born, when scarce a shed 
Could be obtained to shelter him or me 
From the bleak air ? A stable was our 

warmth, 
A manger his; yet soon enforced to fly 
Thence into Egypt, till the murderous king 
Were dead, who sought his life, and, miss- 
ing, filled 
With infant blood the streets of Bethle- 
hem. 
From Egypt home returned, in Nazareth 
Hath been our dwelling many years; his 
life 80 

Private, unactive, calm, contemplative, 
Little suspicious to any king. But now, 
Full grown to man, acknowledged, as I 

hear, 
By John the Baptist, and in public shewn, 
Son owned from Heaven by his Father's 

voice, 
I looked for some great change. To 

honour? no; 
But trouble, as old Simeon plain foretold, 
That to the fall and rising he should be 
Of many in Israel, and to a sign 
Spoken against — that through my very 

SOul 90 



260 



PARADISE REGAINED 



A sword shall pierce. This is my favoured 

lot, 
My exaltation to afflictions high ! 
Afflicted I may be, it seems, and blest ! 
I will not argue that, nor will repine. 
But where delays he now ? Some great 

intent 
Conceals him. When twelve years he scarce 

had seen, 
I lost him, but so found as well I saw 
He could not lose himself, but went about 
His Father's business. What he meant I 

mused — 
Since understand; much more his absence 
now ioo 

Thus long to some great purpose he ob- 
scures. 
But I to wait with patience am inured; 
My heart hath been a storehouse long of 

things 
And sayings laid up, portending strange 
events." 
Thus Mary, pondering oft, and oft to 
mind 
Recalling what remarkably had passed 
Since first her Salutation heard, with 

thoughts 
Meekly composed awaited the fulfilling: 
The while her Son, tracing the desert wild, 
Sole, but with holiest meditations fed, no 
Into himself descended, and at once 
All his great work to come before him 

set — 
How to begin, how to accomplish best 
His end of being on Earth, and mission 

high. 
For Satan, with sly preface to return, 
Had left him vacant, and with speed was 

gone 
Up to the middle region of thick air, 
Where all his Potentates in council sate. 
There, without sign of boast, or sign of 

joy, 
Solicitous and blank, he thus began: — 120 
" Princes, Heaven's ancient Sons, Ethe- 
real Thrones — 
Dsemonian Spirits now, from the element 
Each of his reign allotted, rightlier called 
Powers of Fire, Air, Water, and Earth be- 
neath 
(So may we hold our place and these mild 

seats 
Without new trouble !) — such an enemy 
Is risen to invade us, who no less 
Threatens than our expulsion down to Hell. 



I, as I undertook, and with the vote 
Consenting in full frequence was impow- 
ered, 130 

Have found him, viewed him, tasted him; 

but find 
Far other labour to be undergone 
Than when I dealt with Adam, first of 

men, 
Though Adam by his wife's allurement 

fell, 
However to this Man inferior far — 
If he be Man by mother's side, at least 
With more than human gifts from Heaven 

adorned, 
Perfections absolute, graces divine, 
And amplitude of mind to greatest deeds. 
Therefore I am returned, lest confidence 
Of my success with Eve in Paradise i 4I 
Deceive ye to persuasion over-sure 
Of like succeeding here. I summon all 
Rather to be in readiness with hand 
Or counsel to assist, lest I, who erst 
Thought none my equal, now be over- 
matched." 
So spake the old Serpent, doubting, and 
from all 
With clamour was assured their utmost aid 
At his command; when from amidst them 

rose 
Belial, the dissolutest Spirit that fell, 150 
The sensualest, and, after Asmodai, 
The fleshliest Incubus, and thus advised: — 

" Set women in his eye and in his walk, 
Among daughters of men the fairest found. 
Many are in each region passing fair 
As the noon sky, more like to goddesses 
Than mortal creatures, graceful and dis- 
creet, 
Expert in amorous arts, enchanting tongues 
Persuasive, virgin majesty with mild 
And sweet allayed, yet terrible to ap- 
proach, 160 
Skilled to retire, and in retiring draw 
Hearts after them tangled in amorous nets. 
Such object hath the power to soften and 

tame 
Severest temper, smooth the rugged'st 

brow, 
TCnerve, and with voluptuous hope dissolve, 
Draw out with credulous desire, and lead 
At will the manliest, resolutest breast, 
As the magnetic hardest iron draws. 
Women, when nothing else, beguiled the 

heart 
Of wisest Solomon, and made him build, 170 



BOOK SECOND 



26: 



And made him bow, to the gods of his 
wives." 
To whom quick answer Satan thus re- 
turned: — 
" Belial, in much uneven scale thou weigh'st 
All others by thyself. Because of old 
Thou thyself doat'st on womankind, admir- 
ing 
Their shape, their colour, and attractive 

grace, 
None are, thou think'st, but taken with 

such toys. 

Before the Flood, thou, with thy lusty crew, 

False titled Sons of God, roaming the 

Earth, 179 

Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of 

men, 
And coupled with them, and begot a race. 
Have we not seen, or by relation heard, 
In courts and regal chambers how thou 

lurk'st, 
In wood or grove, by mossy fountain-side, 
In valley or green meadow, to waylay 
Some beauty rare, Calisto, Clymene, 
Daphne, or Semele, Antiopa, 
Or Amymone, Syrinx, many more 
Too long — then lay'st thy scapes on names 

adored, 
Apollo, Neptune, Jupiter, or Pan, 190 

Satyr, or Faun, or Silvan ? But these 

haunts 
Delight not all. Among the sons of men 
How many have with a smile made small 

account 
Of beauty and her lures, easily scorned 
All her assaults, on worthier things intent ! 
Remember that Pellean conqueror, 
A youth, how all the beauties of the East 
He slightly viewed, and slightly over- 
passed; 
How he surnamed of Africa dismissed, 
In his prime youth, the fair Iberian maid. 
For Solomon, he lived at ease, and, full 201 
Of honour, wealth, high fare, aimed not be- 
yond 
Higher design than to enjoy his state; 
Thence to the bait of women lay exposed. 
But he whom we attempt is wiser far 
Than Solomon, of more exalted mind, 
Made and set wholly on the accomplish- 
ment 
Of greatest things. What woman will you 

find, 
Though of this age the wonder and the 
fame, 



On whom his leisure will voutsafed an 

eye 210 

Of fond desire ? Or should she, confident, 
As sitting queen adored on Beauty's throne, 
Descend with all her winning charms be- 
girt 
To enamour, as the zone of Venus once 
Wrought that effect on Jove (so fables 

tell), 
How would one look from his majestic 

brow, 
Seated as on the top of Virtue's hill, 
Discountenance her despised, and put to 

rout 
All her array, her female pride deject, 
Or turn to reverent awe ! For Beauty 

stands 220 

In the admiration only of weak minds 
Led captive; cease to admire, and all her 

plumes 
Fall flat, and shrink into a trivial toy, 
At every sudden slighting quite abashed. 
Therefore with manlier objects we must try 
His constancy — with such as have more 

shew 
Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular 

praise 
(Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest 

wrecked) ; 
Or that which only seems to satisfy 
Lawful desires of nature, not beyond. 230 
And now I know he hungers, where no 

food 
Is to be found, in the wide Wilderness: 
The rest commit to me; I shall let pass 
No advantage, and his strength as oft as- 

say." 
He ceased, and heard their grant in loud 

acclaim ; 
Then forthwith to him takes a chosen band 
Of Spirits likest to himself in guile, 
To be at hand and at his beck appear, 
If cause were to unfold some active scene 
Of various persons, each to know his part; 
Then to the desert takes with these his 

flight, 241 

Where still, from shade to shade, the Son 

of God, 
After forty days' fasting, had remained, 
Now hungering first, and to himself thus 

said : — 
" Where will this end ? Four times ten 

days I have passed 
Wandering this woody maze, and human 

food 



262 



PARADISE REGAINED 



Nor tasted, nor had appetite. That fast 
To virtue I impute not, or count part 
Of what I suffer here. If nature need not, 
Or God support nature without repast, 250 
Though needing, what praise is it to en- 
dure ? 
But now I feel I hunger; which declares 
Nature hath need of what she asks. Yet 

God 
Can satisfy that need some other way, 
Though hunger still remain. So it remain 
Without this body's wasting, I content me, 
And from the sting of famine fear no 

harm; 
Nor mind it, fed with better thoughts, that 

feed 
Me hungering more to do my Father's 

will." 
It was the hour of night, when thus the 

Son 260 

Communed in silent walk, then laid him 

down 
Under the hospitable covert nigh 
Of trees thick interwoven. There he slept, 
And dreamed, as appetite is wont to dream, 
Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment 

sweet. 
Him thought he by the brook of Cherith 

stood, 
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 
Food to Elijah bringing even and morn — 
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from 

what they brought; 
He saw the Prophet also, how he fled 270 
Into the desert, and how there he slept 
Under a juniper — then how, awaked, 
He found his supper on the coals prepared, 
And by the Angel was bid rise and eat, 
And eat the second time after repose, 
The strength whereof sufficed him forty 



Sometimes that with Elijah he partook, 

Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

Thus wore out night; and now the harald 
Lark 

Left his ground-nest, high towering to de- 
scry 280 

The Morn's approach, and greet her with 
his song. 

As lightly from his grassy couch up rose 

Our Saviour, and found all was but a 
dream ; 

Fasting he went to sleep, and fasting 
waked. 

Up to a hill anon his steps he reared, 



From whose high top to ken the prospect 

round, 
If cottage were in view, sheep-cote, or 

herd; 
But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he 

saw — 
Only in a bottom saw a pleasant grove, 
With chaunt of tuneful birds resounding 

loud. 290 

Thither he bent his way, determined there 
To rest ai, noon, and entered soon the shade 
High-roofed, and walks beneath, and alleys 

brown, 
That opened in the midst a woody scene; 
Nature's own work it seemed (Nature 

taught Art), 
And, to a superstitious eye, the haunt 
Of wood-gods and wood-nymphs. He 

viewed it round; 
When suddenly a man before him stood, 
Not rustic as before, but seemlier clad, 
As one in city or court or palace bred, 300 
And with fair speech these words to him 

addressed: — 
" With granted leave officious I return, 
But much more wonder that the Son of 

God 
In this wild solitude so long should bide, 
Of all things destitute, and, well I know, 
Not without hunger. Others of some note, 
As story tells, have trod this wilderness: 
The fugitive Bond-woman, with her son, 
Outcast Nebaioth , yet found here relief 
By a providing Angel ; all the race 3 10 

Of Israel here had famished, had not God 
Rained from heaven manna; and that Pro- 
phet bold, 
Native of Thebez, wandering here, was fed 
Twice by a voice inviting him to eat. 
Of thee these forty days none hath regard, 
Forty and more deserted here indeed." 
To whom thus Jesus: — "What con- 

clud'st thou hence ? 
They all had need; I, as thou seest, have 

none." 
" How hast thou hunger then ? " Satan 

replied. 
" Tell me, if food were now before thee 

set, 320 

Wouldst thou not eat ? " " Thereafter as 

Hike 
The giver," answered Jesus. " Why should 

that 
Cause thy refusal ? " said the subtle Fiend. 
" Hast thou not right to all created things ? 



•book second 



263 



Owe not all creatures, by just right, to thee 
Duty and service, nor to stay till bid, 
But tender all their power ? Nor mention I 
Meats by the law unclean, or offered first 
To idols — those young Daniel could refuse ; 
Nor proffered by an enemy — though who 
Would scruple that, with want oppressed ? 

Behold, 331 

Nature ashamed, or, better to express, 
Troubled, that thou shouldst hunger, hath 

purveyed 
From all the elements her choicest store, 
To treat thee as beseems, and as her Lord 
With honour. Only deign to sit and eat." 
He spake no dream; for, as his words 

bad end, 
Our Saviour, lifting up his eyes, beheld, 
In ample space under the broadest shade, 
A table richly spread in regal mode, 340 
With dishes piled and meats of noblest sort 
And savour — beasts of chase, or fowl of 

game, 
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 
Grisamber-steamed; all fish, from sea or 

shore, 
Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin, 
And exquisitest name, for which was 

drained 
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast 
Alas ! how simple, to these cates compared, 
Was that crude Apple that diverted Eve ! 
And at a stately sideboard, by the wine, 350 
That fragrant smell diffused, in order stood 
Tall stripling youths rich-clad, of fairer hue 
Than Ganymed or Hylas; distant more, 
Under the trees now tripped, now solemn 

stood, 
Nymphs of Diana's train, and Naiades 
With fruits and flowers from Amalthea's 

horn, 
And ladies of the Hesperides, that seemed 
Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since 
Of faery damsels met in forest wide 
By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, 360 
Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore. 
And all the while harmonious airs were 

heard 
Of chiming strings or charming pipes; 

and winds 
Of gentlest gale Arabian odours fanned 
From their soft wings, and Flora's earliest 

smells. 
Such was the splendour; and the Tempter 

now 
His invitation earnestly renewed : — 



" What doubts the Son of God to sit and 
eat? 
These are not fruits forbidden; no inter- 
dict 
Defends the touching of these viands pure; 
Their taste no knowledge works, at least 
of evil, 37 1 

But life preserves, destroys life's enemy, 
Hunger, with sweet restorative delight. 
All these are Spirits of air, and woods, and 

springs, 
Thy gentle ministers, who come to pay 
Thee homage, and acknowledge thee their 

Lord. 
What doubt'st thou, Son of God? Sit 
down and eat." 
To whom thus Jesus temperately re- 
plied: — 
" Said'st thou not that to all things I had 

right ? 
And who withholds my power that right to 
use ? 380 

Shall I receive by gift what of my own, 
When and where likes me best, I can com- 
mand ? 
I can at will, doubt not, as soon as thou, 
Command a table in this wilderness, 
And call swift flights of Angels ministrant, 
Arrayed in glory, on my cup to attend: 
Why shouldst thou, then, obtrude this dili- 
gence 
In vain, where no acceptance it can find ? 
And with my hunger what hast thou to 

do? 
Thy pompous delicacies I contemn, 390 

And count thy specious gifts no gifts, but 
guiles." 
To whom thus answered Satan, male- 
content: — 
" That I have also power to give thou 

seest; 
If of that power I bring thee voluntary 
What I might have bestowed on whom I 

pleased, 
And rather opportunely in this place 
Chose to impart to thy apparent need, 
Why shouldst thou not accept it ? But I 

see 
What I can do or offer is suspect. 
Of these things others quickly will dispose, 
Whose pains have earned the far-fet spoil." 
With that 4 oi 

Both table and provision vanished quite, 
With sound of harpies' wings and talons 
heard ; 



264 



PARADISE REGAINED 



Only the importune Tempter still re- 
mained, 

And with these words his temptation pur- 
sued: — 
" By hunger, that each other creature 
tames, 

Thou art not to be harmed, therefore not 
moved; 

Thy temperance, invincible besides, 

For no allurement yields to appetite; 

And all thy heart is set on high designs, 410 

High actions. But wherewith to be 
achieved ? 

Great acts require great means of enter- 
prise ; 

Thou art unknown, unfriended, low of 
birth, 

A carpenter thy father known, thyself 

Bred up in .poverty and straits at home, 

Lost in a desert here and hunger-bit. 

Which way, or from what hope, dost thou 
aspire 

To greatness ? whence authority deriv'st ? 

What followers, what retin'ue canst thou 
gain, 

Or at thy heels the dizzy multitude, 420 

Longer than thou canst feed them on thy 
cost? 

Money brings honour, friends, conquest, 
and realms. 

What raised Antipater the Edomite, 

And his son Herod placed on Juda's 
throne, 

Thy throne, but gold, that got him puissant 
friends ? 

Therefore, if at great things thou wouldst 
arrive, 

Get riches first, get wealth, and treasure 
heap — 

Not difficult, if thou hearken to me. 

Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand; 

They whom I favour thrive in wealth 
amain, 430 

While virtue, valour, wisdom, sit in want." 
To whom thus Jesus patiently replied: — 

" Yet wealth without these three is impo- 
tent 

To gain dominion, or to keep it gained — 

Witness those ancient empires of the earth, 

In highth of all their flowing wealth dis- 
solved; 

But men endued with these have oft at- 
tained, 

In lowest poverty, to highest deeds — 

Gideon, and Jephtha, and the shepherd lad 



Whose offspring on the throne of Juda 
sate 440 

So many ages, and shall yet regain 
That seat, and reign in Israel without 

end. 
Among the Heathen (for throughout the 

world 
To me is not unknown what hath been done 
Worthy of memorial) canst thou not re- 
member 
Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus ? 
For I esteem those names of men so poor, 
Who could do mighty things, and could 

contemn 
Riches, though offered from the hand of 

kings. 
And what in me seems wanting but that I 
May also in this poverty as soon 451 

Accomplish what they did, perhaps and 

more ? 
Extol not riches, then, the toil of fools, 
The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare; 

more apt 
To slacken virtue and abate her edge 
Than prompt her to do aught may merit 

praise. 
What if with like aversion I reject 
Riches and realms ! Yet not for that a 

crown, 
Golden in shew, is but a wreath of thorns. 
Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleep- 
less nights, 460 
To him who wears the regal diadem, 
When on his shoulders each man's burden 

lies; 
For therein stands the office of a king, 
His honour, virtue, merit, and chief praise, 
That for the public all this weight he bears. 
Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules 
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a 

king — 
Which every wise and virtuous man at- 
tains ; 
And who attains not, ill aspires to rule 
Cities of men, or headstrong multitudes, 
Subject himself to anarchy within, 471 

Or lawless passions in him, which he serves. 
But to guide nations in the way of truth 
By saving doctrine, and from error lead 
To know, and, knowing, worship God aright, 
Is yet more kingly. This attracts the soul, 
Governs the inner man, the nobler part; 
That other o'er the body only reigns, 
And oft by force — which to a generous 
mind 



BOOK THIRD 



265 



So reigning can be no sincere delight. 480 
Besides, to give a kingdom hath been 

thought 
Greater and nobler done, and to lay down 
Far more magnanimous, than to assume. 



Riches are needless, then, both for them- 
selves, 

And for thy reason why they should be 
sought — 

To gain a sceptre, of test better missed." 



THE THIRD BOOK 

So spake the Son of God; and Satan stood 
A while as mute, confounded what to say, 
What to reply, confuted and convinced 
Of his weak arguing and fallacious drift; 
At length, collecting all his serpent wiles, 
With soothing words renewed, him thus 

accosts : — 
" I see thou know'st what is of use to 

know, 
What best to say canst say, to do canst do; 
Thy actions to thy words accord; thy words 
To thy large heart give utterance due; thy 

heart 10 

Contains of good, wise, just, the perfet 

shape. 
Should kings and nations from thy mouth 

consult, 
Thy counsel would be as the oracle 
Urim and Thummim, those oraculous gems 
On Aaron's breast, or tongue of Seers old 
Infallible; or, wert thou sought to deeds 
That might require the array of war, thy 

skill 
Of conduct would be such that all the world 
Could not sustain thy prowess, or subsist 
In battle, though against thy few in arms. 
These godlike virtues wherefore dost thou 

hide ? 21 

Affecting private life, or more obscure 
In savage wilderness, wherefore deprive 
All Earth her wonder at thy acts, thyself 
The fame and glory — glory, the reward 
That sole excites to high attempts the flame 
Of most erected spirits, most tempered pure 
iEthereal, who all pleasures else despise, 
All treasures and all gain esteem as dross, 
And dignities and powers, all but the high- 
est ? 30 
Thy years are ripe, and over-ripe. The son 
Of Macedonian Philip had ere these 
Won Asia, and the throne of Cyrus held 
At his dispose; young Scipio had brought 

down 
The Carthaginian pride; young Pompey 

quelled 



The Pontic king, and in triumph' had rode. 
Yet years, and to ripe years judgment ma- 
ture, 
Quench not the thirst of glory, but aug- 
ment. 
Great Julius, whom now all the world ad- 
mires, 
The more he grew in years, the more 
inflamed 40 

With glory, wept that he had lived so long 
Inglorious. But thou yet art not too late." 
To whom our Saviour calmly thus re- 
plied: — 
" Thou neither dost persuade me to seek 

wealth 
For empire's sake, nor empire to affect 
For glory's sake, by all thy argument. 
For what is glory but the blaze of fame, 
The people's praise, if always praise un- 
mixed ? 
And what the people but a herd confused, 
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol 50 

Things vulgar, and, well weighed, scarce 

worth the praise ? 
They praise and they admire they know 

not what, 
And know not whom, but as one leads the 

other; 
And what delight to be by such extolled, 
To live upon their tongues, and be their 

talk? 
Of whom to be dispraised were no small 

praise — 
His lot who dares be singularly good. 
The intelligent among them and the wise 
Are few, and glory scarce of few is raised. 
This is true glory and renown — when God, 
Looking on the Earth, with approbation 
marks 6r 

The just man, and divulges him through 

Heaven 
To all his Angels, who with true applause 
Recount his praises. Thus he did to Job, 
When, to extend his fame through Heaven 

and Earth, 
As thou to thy reproach may'st well re- 
member, 



2 66 



PARADISE REGAINED 



He asked thee, ' Hast thou seen my servant 

Job?' 
Famous he was in Heaven; on Earth less 

known, 
Where glory is false glory, attributed 
To things not glorious, men not worthy of 
fame. 70 

They err who count it glorious to subdue 
By conquest far and wide, to overrun 
Large countries, and in field great battles 

win, 
Great cities by assault. What do these 

worthies 
But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and en- 
slave 
Peaceable nations, neighbouring or remote, 
Made captive, yet deserving freedom more 
Than those their conquerors, who leave be- 
hind 
Nothing but ruin wheresoe'er they rove, 
And all the flourishing works of peace de- 
stroy; 80 
Then swell with pride, and must be titled 

Gods, 
Great Benefactors of mankind, Deliverers, 
Worshipped with temple, priest, and sacri- 
fice ? 
One is the son of Jove, of Mars the other; 
Till conqueror Death discover them scarce 

men, 
Rowling in brutish vices, and deformed, 
Violent or shameful death their due re- 
ward. 
But, if there be in glory aught of good; 
It may by means far different be attained, 
Without ambition, war, or violence — 90 
By deeds of peace, by wisdom eminent, 
By patience, temperance. I mention still 
Him whom thy wrongs, with saintly pa- 
tience borne, 
Made famous in a land and times obscure; 
Who names not now with honour patient 

Job? 
Poor Socrates, (who next more memora- 
ble ?) 
By what he taught and suffered for so do- 
ing, 
For truth's sake suffering death unjust, 

lives now 
Equal in fame to proudest conquerors. 
Yet, if for fame and glory aught be done, 100 
Aught suffered — if young African for 

fame 
His wasted country freed from Punic 
rage — 



The deed becomes unpraised, the man at 

least, 
And loses, though but verbal, his reward. 
Shall I seek glory, then, as vain men seek, 
Oft not deserved ? I seek not mine, but 

His 
Who sent me, and thereby witness whence 
I am." 
To whom the Tempter, murmuring, thus 
replied: — 
" Think not so slight of glory, therein least 
Resembling thy great Father. He seeks 

glory, 
And for his glory all things made, all things 
Orders and governs; nor content in Hea- 
ven, 
By all his Angels glorified, requires 
Glory from men, from all men, good or bad, 
Wise or unwise, no difference, no exemp- 
tion. 
Above all sacrifice, or hallowed gift, 
Glory he requires, and glory he receives, 
Promiscuous from all nations, Jew, or 

Greek, 
Or Barbarous, nor exception hath de- 
clared ; 
From us, his foes pronounced, glory he ex- 
acts." 120 
To whom our Saviour fervently replied: 
"And reason; since his Word all things 

produced, 
Though chiefly not for glory as prime end, 
But to shew forth his goodness, and impart 
His good communicable to every soul 
Freely ; of whom what could He less expect 
Than glory and benediction — that is, 

thanks — 
The slightest, easiest, readiest recompense 
From them who could return him nothing 

else, 
And, not returning that, would likeliest 
render 130 

Contempt instead, dishonour, obloquy ? 
Hard recompense, unsuitable return 
For so much good, so much beneficence ! 
But why should man seek glory, who of his 

own 
Hath nothing, and to whom nothing be- 
longs 
But condemnation, ignominy, and shame — 
Who, for so many benefits received, 
Turned recreant to God, ingrate and false, 
And so of all true good himself despoiled; 
Yet, sacrilegious, to himself would take 140 
That which to God alone of right belongs ? 



BOOK THIRD 



267 



Yet so much bounty is in God, such grace, 
That who advance his glory, not their own, 
Them he himself to glory will advance." 

So spake the Son of God ; and here again 
Satan had. not to answer, but stood struck 
With guilt of his own sin — for he himself, 
Insatiable of glory, had lost all; 
Yet of another plea bethought him soon: — 
"Of glory, as thou wilt," said he, "so 
deem; 150 

Worth or not worth the seeking, let it pass. 
But to a Kingdom thou art born — or- 
dained 
To sit upon thy father David's throne, 
By mother's side thy father, though thy 

right 
Be now in powerful hands, that will not 

part 
Easily from possession won with arms. 
Judaea now and all the Promised Land, 
Reduced a province under Roman yoke, 
Obeys Tiberius, nor is always ruled 
With temperate sway: oft have they vio- 
lated 160 
The Temple, oft the Law, with foul affronts, 
Abominations rather, as did once 
Antiochus. And think'st thou to regain 
Thy right by sitting still, or thus retiring ? 
So did not Machabeus. He indeed 
Retired unto the Desert, but with arms; 
And o'er a mighty king so oft prevailed 
That by strong hand his family obtained, 
Though priests, the crown, and David's 

throne usurped, 
With Modin and her suburbs once content. 
If kingdom move thee not, let move thee 
zeal 171 

And duty — zeal and duty are not slow, 
But on Occasion's forelock watchful wait: 
They themselves rather are occasion best — 
Zeal of thy Father's house, duty to free 
Thy country from her heathen servitude. 
So shalt thou best fulfil, best verify, 
The Prophets old, who sung thy endless 

reign — 
The happier reign the sooner it begins. 
Reign then; what canst thou better do the 
while ? " 180 

To whom our Saviour answer thus re- 
turned: — 
" All things are best fulfilled in their due 

time; 
And time there is for all things, Truth 

hath said. 
If of my reign Prophetic Writ hath told 



That it shall never end, so, when begin 
The Father in his purpose hath decreed — 
He in whose hand all times and seasons 

rowl. 
What if he hath decreed that I shall first 
Be tried in humble state, and things ad- 
verse, 
By tribulations, injuries, insults, 190 

Contempts, and scorns, and snares, and 

violence, 
Suffering, abstaining, quietly expecting 
Without distrust or doubt, that He may 

know 
What I can suffer, how obey ? Who best 
Can suffer best can do, best reign who first 
Well hath obeyed — just trial ere I merit 
My exaltation without change or end. 
But what concerns it thee when I begin 
My everlasting Kingdom ? Why art thou 
Solicitous ? What moves thy inquisition ? 
Know'st thou not that my rising is thy 
fall, 201 

And my promotion will be thy destruc- 
tion ? " 
To whom the Tempter, inly racked, re- 
plied: — 
" Let that come when it comes. All hope 

is lost 
Of my reception into grace; what worse ? 
For where no hope is left is left no fear. 
If there be worse, the expectation more 
Of worse torments me than the feeling can. 
I would be at the worst; worst is my port, 
My harbour, and my ultimate repose, 210 
The end I would attain, my final good. 
My error was my error, and my crime 
My crime; whatever, for itself condemned, 
And will alike be punished, whether thou 
Reign or reign not — though to that gentle 

brow 
Willingly I could fly, and hope thy reign, 
From that placid aspect and meek regard, 
Rather than aggravate my evil state, 
Would stand between me and thy Father's 

ire 
(Whose ire I dread more than the fire of 

Hell) 
A shelter and a kind of shading cool 
Interposition, as a summer's cloud. 
If I, then, to the worst that can be haste, 
Why move thy feet so slow to what is 

best? 
Happiest, both to thyself and all the world, 
That thou, who worthiest art, shouldst be 
their King ! 



268 



PARADISE REGAINED 



Perhaps thou linger'st in deep thoughts de- 
tained 
Of the enterprise so hazardous and high ! 
No wonder; for, though in thee be united 
What of perfection can in Man be found, 
Or human nature can receive, consider 231 
Thy life hath yet been private, most part 

spent 
At home, scarce viewed the Galilean towns, 
And once a year Jerusalem, few days' 
Short sojourn; and what thence couldst 

thou observe ? 
The world thou hast not seen, much less 

her glory, 
Empires, and monarchs, and their radiant 

courts — 
Best school of best experience, quickest in 

sight 
In all things that to greatest actions lead. 
The wisest, unexperienced, will be ever 240 | 
Timorous, and loth, with novice modesty 
(As he who, seeking asses, found a king- j 

dom) 
Irresolute, unhardy, unadventrous. 
But I will bring thee where thou soon shalt 

quit 
Those rudiments, and see before thine eyes l 
The monarchies of the Earth, their pomp 

and state — 
Sufficient introduction to inform 
Thee, of thyself so apt, in regal arts, 
And regal mysteries; that thou may'st 

know 
How best their opposition to withstand." 
With that (such power was given him 

then), he took 251 

The Son of God up to a mountain high. 
It was a mountain at whose verdant feet 
A spacious plain outstretched in circuit 

wide 
Lay pleasant; from his side two rivers 

flowed, 
The one winding, the other straight, and 

left between 
Fair champaign, with less rivers inter- 
veined, 
Then meeting joined their tribute to the 

sea. 
Fertil of corn the glebe, of oil, and wine ; 
With herds the pasture thronged, with 

flocks the hills; 260 

Huge cities and high - towered, that well 

might seem 
The seats of mightiest monarchs; and so 

large 



The prospect was that here and there was 

room 
For barren desert, fountainless and dry. 
To this high mountain-top the Tempter 

brought 
Our Saviour, and new train of words be- 
gan:— 
" Well have we speeded, and o'er hill 

and dale, 
Forest, and field, and flood, temples and 

towers, 
Cut shorter many a league. Here thou be- 

hold'st 269 

Assyria, and her empire's ancient bounds, 
Araxes and the Caspian lake; thence on 
As far as Indus east, Euphrates west, 
And oft beyond; to south the Persian bay, 
And, inaccessible, the Arabian drouth: 
Here, Nineveh, of length within her wall 
Several days' journey, built by Ninus old, 
Of that first golden monarchy the seat, 
And seat of Salmanassar, whose success 
Israel in long captivity still mourns; 279 
There Babylon, the wonder of all tongues, 
As ancient, but rebuilt by him who twice 
Judah and all thy father David's house 
Led captive, and Jerusalem laid waste, 
Till Cyrus set them free ; Persepolis, 
His city, there thou seest, and Bactra 

there ; 
Ecbatana her structure vast there shews, 
And Hecatompylos her hunderd gates; 
There Susa by Choaspes, amber stream, 
The drink of none but kings; of later fame, 
Built by Emathian or by Parthian hands, 
The great Seleucia, Nisibis, and there 291 
Artaxata, Teredon, Ctesiphon, 
Turning with easy eye, thou may'st behold. 
All these the Parthian (now some ages 

past 
By great Arsaces led, who founded first 
That empire) under his dominion holds, 
From the luxurious kings of Antioch won. 
And just in time thou com'st to have a 

view 
Of his great power; for now the Parthian 

king 
In Ctesiphon hath gathered all his host 300 
Against the Scythian, whose incursions wild 
Have wasted Sogdiana; to her aid 
He marches now in haste. See, though 

from far, 
His thousands, in what martial equipage 
They issue forth, steel bows and shafts 

their arms, 



BOOK THIRD 



269 



Of equal dread in flight or in pursuit — 
All horsemen, in which fight they most ex- 
cel; 
See how in warlike muster they appear, 
In rhombs, and wedges, and half-moons, 
and wings." 
He looked, and saw what numbers num- 
berless 3 10 
The city gates outpoured, light -armed 

troops 
In coats of mail and military pride. 
In mail their horses clad, yet fleet and 

strong, 
Prauncing their riders bore, the flower and 

choice 
Of many provinces from bound to bound — 
From Arachosia, from Candaor east, 
And Margiana, to the Hyrcanian cliffs 
Of Caucasus, and dark Iberian dales; 
From Atropatia, and the neighbouring 

plains 
Of Adiabene, Media, and the south 320 

Of Susiana, to Balsara's haven. 
He saw them in their forms of battle 

ranged, 
How quick they wheeled, and flying behind 

them shot 
Sharp sleet of arrowy showers against the 

face 
Of their pursuers, and overcame by flight; 
The field all iron cast a gleaming brown. 
Nor wanted clouds of foot, nor, on each 

horn, 
Cuirassiers all in steel for standing fight, 
Chariots, or elephants indorsed with towers 
Of archers; nor of labouring pioners 330 
A multitude, with spades and axes armed, 
To lay hills plain, fell woods, or valleys fill, 
Or where plain was raise hill, or overlay 
With bridges rivers proud, as with a yoke: 
Mules after these, camels and dromedaries, 
And waggons fraught with utensils of war. 
Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp, 
When Agrican, with all his northern pow- 
ers, 
Besieged Albracca, as romances tell, 
The city of Gallaphrone, from thence to 
win 340 

The fairest of her sex, Angelica, 
His daughter, sought by many prowest 

knights, 
Both Paynim and the peers of Charlemane. 
Such and so numerous was their chivalry; 
At sight whereof the Fiend yet more pre- 
sumed, 



And to our Saviour thus his words re- 
newed: — 
" That thou may'st know I seek not to 
engage 
Thy virtue, and not every way secure 
On no slight grounds thy safety, hear and 

mark 
To what end I have brought thee hither, 
and shew 3=50 

All this fair sight. Thy kingdom, though 

foretold 
By Prophet or by Angel, unless thou 
Endeavour, as thy father David did, 
Thou never shalt obtain: prediction still 
In all things, and all men, supposes means; 
Without means used, what it predicts re- 
vokes. 
But say thou wert possessed of David's 

throne 
By free consent of all, none opposite, 
Samaritan or Jew; how couldst thou hope 
Long to enjoy it quiet and secure 360 

Between two such enclosing enemies, 
Roman and Parthian ? Therefore one of 

these 
Thou must make sure thy own: the Par- 
thian first, 
By my advice, as nearer, and of late 
Found able by invasion to annoy 
Thy country, and captive lead away her 

kings, 
Antigonus and old Hyrcanus, bound, 
Maugre the Roman. It shall be my task 
To render thee the Parthian at dispose, 
Choose which thou wilt, by conquest or by 
league. 370 

By him thou shalt regain, without him not, 
That which alone can truly reinstall thee 
In David's royal seat, his true successor — 
Deliverance of thy brethren, those Ten 

Tribes 
Whose offspring in his territory yet serve 
In Habor, and among the Medes dispersed : 
Ten sons of Jacob, two of Joseph, lost 
Thus long from Israel, serving, as of old 
Their fathers in the land of Egypt served, 
This offer sets before thee to deliver. 3S0 
These if from servitude thou shalt restore 
To their inheritance, then, nor till then, 
Thou on the throne of David in full glory, 
From Egypt to Euphrates and beyond, 
Shalt reign, and Rome or Caesar not need 
fear." 
To whom our Saviour answered thus, 
unmoved : — 



270 



PARADISE REGAINED 



" Much ostentation vain of fleshly arm 
And fragile arms, much instrument of war, 
Long in preparing, soon to nothing brought, 
Before mine eyes thou hast set, and in my 

ear 390 

Vented much policy, and projects deep 
Of enemies, of aids, battles, and leagues, 
Plausible to the world, to me worth naught. 
Means I must use, thou say'st; prediction 

else 
Will unpredict, and fail me of the throne ! 
My time, I told thee (and that time for 

thee 
Were better farthest off), is not yet come. 
When that comes, think not thou to find 

me slack 
On my part aught endeavouring, or to need 
Thy politic maxims, or that cumbersome 
Luggage of war there shewn me — argu- 
ment 401 
Of human weakness rather than of strength. 
My brethren, as thou call'st them, those 

Ten Tribes, 
I must deliver, if I mean to reign 
David's true heir, and his full sceptre sway 
To just extent over all Israel's sons ! 
But whence to thee this zeal ? Where was 

it then 
For Israel, or for David, or his throne, 
When thou stood'st up his tempter to the 

pride 
Of numbering Israel — which cost the 

lives 410 

Of threescore and ten thousand Israelites 
By three days' pestilence ? Such was thy 

zeal 
To Israel then, the same that now to me. 
As for those captive tribes, themselves were 

they 
Who wrought their own captivity, fell off 



From God to worship calves, the deities 
Of Egypt, Baal next and Ashtaroth, 
And all the idolatries of heathen round, 
Besides their other worse than heathenish 

crimes; 
Nor in the land of their captivity 420 

Humbled themselves, or penitent besought 
The God of their forefathers, but so died 
Impenitent, and left a race behind 
Like to themselves, distinguishable scarce 
From Gentiles, but by circumcision vain, 
And God with idols in their worship joined. 
Should I of these the liberty regard, 
Who, freed, as to their ancient patrimony, 
Unhumbled, unrepentant, unreformed, 
Headlong would follow, and to their gods 

perhaps 43 o 

Of Bethel and of Dan? No; let them 

serve 
Their enemies who serve idols with God. 
Yet He at length, time to himself best 

known, 
Remembering Abraham, by some wondrous 

call 
May bring them back, repentant and sincere, 
And at their passing cleave the Assyrian 

flood, 
While to their native land with joy they 

haste, 
As the Red Sea and Jordan once he cleft, 
When to the Promised Land their fathers 



To his due time and providence I leave 
them." 440 

So spake Israel's true King, and to the 
Fiend 

Made answer meet, that made void all his 
wiles. 

So fares it when with truth falsehood con- 
tends. 



THE FOURTH BOOK 

Perplexed and troubled at his bad success 
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply, 
Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his 

hope 
So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric 
That sleeked his tongue, and won so much 

on Eve, 
So little here, nay lost. But Eve was Eve; 
This far his over-match, who, self-deceived 
And rash, beforehand had no better weighed 



The strength he was to cope with, or his 

own. 
But — as a man who had been matchless 

held 10 

In cunning, over-reached where least he 

thought, 
To salve his credit, and for very spite, 
Still will be tempting him who foils him 

still, 
And never cease, though to his shame the 

more; 
Or as a swarm of flies in vintage-time, 



BOOK FOURTH 



27 



About the wine-press where sweet must is 

poured, 
Beat off, returns as oft with humming 

sound ; 
Or surging waves against a solid rock, 
Though all to shivers dashed, the assault 

renew, 
(Vain battery !) and in froth or bubbles 

end — 20 

So Satan, whom repulse upon repulse 
Met ever, and to shameful silence brought, 
Yet gives not o'er, though desperate of 

success, 
And his vain importunity pursues. 
He brought our Saviour to the western side 
Of that high mountain, whence he might 

behold 
Another plain, long, but in breadth not 

wide, 
Washed by the southern sea, and on the 

north 
To equal length backed with a ridge of 

hills 
That screened the fruits of the earth and 

seats of men 30 

From cold Septentrion blasts; thence in the 

midst 
Divided by a river, off whose banks 
On each side an Imperial City stood, 
With towers and temples proudly elevate 
On seven small hills, with palaces adorned, 
Porches and theatres, baths, aqueducts, 
Statues and trophies, and triumphal arcs, 
Gardens and groves, presented to his eyes 
Above the highth of mountains interposed — 
By what strange parallax, or optic skill 40 
Of vision, multiplied through air, or glass 
Of telescope, were curious to enquire. 
And now the Tempter thus his silence 

broke : — 
" The city which thou seest no other deem 
Than great and glorious Rome, Queen of 

the Earth 
So far renowned, and with the spoils en- 
riched 
Of nations. There the Capitol thou seest, 
Above the rest lifting his stately head 
On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel 
Impregnable; and there Mount Palatine, 50 
The imperial palace, compass huge, and 

high 
The structure, skill of noblest architects, 
With gilded battlements, conspicuous far, 
Turrets, and terraces, and glittering spires. 
Many a fair edifice besides, more like 



Houses of gods — so well I have disposed 
My aerie microscope — thou may'st behold, 
Outside and inside both, pillars and roofs 
Carved work, the hand of famed artificers 
In cedar, marble, ivory, or gold. 60 

Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, 

and see 
What conflux issuing forth, or entering in: 
Praetors, proconsuls to their provinces 
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state ; 
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their 

power; 
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and 

wings ; 
Or embassies from regions far remote, 
In various habits, on the Appian road, 
Or on the iEmilian — some from farthest 

south, 
Syene, and where the shadow both way 

falls, 70 

Meroe, Nilotic isle, and, more to west, 
The realm of Bocchus to theBlackmoor sea; 
From the Asian kings (and Parthian among 

these), 
From India and the Golden Chersoness, 
And utmost Indian isle Taprobane, 
Dusk faces with white silken turbants 

wreathed ; 
From Gallia, Gades, and the British west; 
Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians 

north 
Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool. 79 
All nations now to Rome obedience pay — 
To Rome's great Emperor, whose wide do- 
main, 
In ample territory, wealth and power, 
Civility of manners, arts and arms, 
And long renown, thou justly may'st prefer 
Before the Parthian. These two thrones 

except, 
The rest are barbarous, and scarce worth 

the sight, 
Shared among petty kings too far removed; 
These having shewn thee, I have shewn 

thee all 
The kingdoms of the world, and all their 

glory. 89 

This Emperor hath no son, and now is old, 
Old and lascivious, and from Rome retired 
To Capreee, an island small but strong 
On the Campanian shore, with purpose 

there 
His horrid lusts in private to enjoy; 
Committing to a wicked favourite 
All public cares, and yet of him suspicious; 



272 



PARADISE REGAINED 



Hated of all, and hating. With what ease, 
Endued with regal virtues as thou art, 
Appearing, and beginning noble deeds, 
Might'st thou expel this monster from his 

throne, 100 

Now made a sty, and, in his place ascend- 
ing* 
A victor-people free from servile yoke ! 
And with my help thou may'st; to me the 

power 
Is given, and by that right I give it thee. 
Aim, therefore, at no less than all the 

world ; 
Aim at the highest; without the highest 

attained, 
Will be for thee no sitting, or not long, 
On David's throne, be prophesied what 

will." 
To whom the Son of God, unmoved, re- 
plied: — 
" Nor doth this grandeur and majestic 

shew no 

Of luxury, though called magnificence, 
More than of arms before, allure mine 

eye, 
Much less my mind; though thou should 'st 

add to tell 
Their sumptuous gluttonies, and gorgeous 

feasts 
On citron tables or Atlantic stone 
(For I have also heard, perhaps have read), 
Their wines of Setia, Cales, and Falerne, 
Chios and Crete, and how they quaff in 

gold, 
Crystal, and myrrhine cups, imbossed with 

gems 
And studs of pearl — to me should'st tell, 

who thirst 120 

And hunger still. Then embassies thou 

shew'st 
From nations far and nigh ! What honour 

that, 
But tedious waste of time, to sit and hear 
So many hollow compliments and lies, 
Outlandish flatteries ? Then proceed'st to 

talk 
Of the Emperor, how easily subdued, 
How gloriously. I shall, thou say'st, expel 
A brutish monster: what if I withal 
Expel a Devil who first made him such ? 
Let his tormentor, Conscience, find him 

out; 130 

For him I was not sent, nor yet to free 
That people, victor once, now vile and base, 
Deservedly made vassal — who, once just, 



Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquered 

well, 
But govern ill the nations under yoke, 
Peeling their provinces, exhausted all 
By lust and rapine; first ambitious grown 
Of triumph, that insulting vanity; 
Then cruel, by their sports to blood inured 
Of fighting beasts, and men to beasts ex- 
posed; 140 
Luxurious by their wealth, and greedier 

still, 
And from the daily Scene effeminate. 
What wise and valiant man would seek to 

free 
These, thus degenerate, by themselves en- 
slaved, 
Or could of inward slaves make outward 

free? 
Know, therefore, when my season comes to 

sit 
On David's throne, it shall be like a tree 
Spreading and overshadowing all the earth, 
Or as a stone that shall to pieces dash 
All monarchies besides throughout the 
world; 150 

And of my Kingdom there shall be no end. 
Means there shall be to this; but what the 

means 
Is not for thee to know, nor me to tell." 
To whom the Tempter, impudent, re- 
plied: — 
" I see all offers made by me how slight 
Thou valuest, because offered, and reject'st. 
Nothing will please the difficult and nice, 
Or nothing more than still to contradict. 
On the other side know also thou that I 
On what I offer set as high esteem, 160 

Nor what I part with mean to give for 

naught. 
All these, which in a moment thou be- 

hold'st, 
The kingdoms of the world, to thee I give 
(For, given to me, I give to whom I please), 
No trifle ; yet with this reserve, not else — 
On this condition, if thou wilt fall down, 
And worship me as thy superior Lord 
(Easily done), and hold them all of me; 
For what can less so great a gift deserve ? " 
Whom thus our Saviour answered with 
disdain: — 170 

" I never liked thy talk, thy offers less; 
Now both abhor, since thou hast dared to 

utter 
The abominable terms, impious condition. 
But I endure the time, till which expired 



BOOK FOURTH 



2 73 



Thou hast permission on me. It is writ- 
ten, 

The first of all commandments, ' Thou shalt 
worship 

The Lord thy God, and only Him shalt 
serve;' 

And dar'st thou to the Son of God pro- 
pound 

To worship thee, accursed ? now more ac- 
cursed 

For this attempt, bolder than that on Eve, 

And more blasphemous; which expect to 
rue. 181 

The kingdoms of the world to thee were 
given ! 

Permitted rather, and by thee usurped; 

Other donation none thou canst produce. 

If given, by whom but by the King of 
kings, 

God over all supreme ? If given to thee, 

By thee how fairly is the Giver now 

Repaid ! But gratitude in thee is lost 

Long since. Wert thou so void of fear or 
shame 

As offer them to me, the Son of God — 190 

To me my own, on such abhorred pact, 

That I fall down and worship thee as God ? 

Get thee behind me ! Plain thou now ap- 
pear'st 

That Evil One, Satan for ever damned." 
To whom the Fiend, with fear abashed, 
replied : — 

" Be not so sore offended, Son of God — 

Though Sons of God both Angels are and 
Men — 

If I, to try whether in higher sort 

Than these thou bear'st that title, have 
proposed 199 

What both from Men and Angels I receive, 

Tetrarchs of Fire, Air, Flood, and on the 
Earth 

Nations besides from all the quartered 
winds — 

God of this World invoked, and World 
beneath. 

Who then thou art, whose coming is fore- 
told 

To me most fatal, me it most concerns. 

The trial hath indamaged thee no way, 

Rather more honour left and more esteem ; 

Me naught advantaged, missing what I 
aimed. 

Therefore let pass, as they are transitory, 

The kingdoms of this world; I shall no 



Advise thee; gain them as thou canst, or 

not. 
And thou thyself seem'st otherwise inclined 
Than to a worldly crown, addicted more 
To contemplation and profound dispute; 
As by that early action may be judged, 
When, slipping from thy mother's eye, thou 

went'st 
Alone into the Temple, there wast found 
Among the gravest Rabbies, disputant 
On points and questions fitting Moses' 

chair, 
Teaching, not taught. The childhood shews 

the man, 220 

As morning shews the day. Be famous, 

then, 
By wisdom; as thy empire must extend, 
So let extend thy mind o'er all the world 
In knowledge; all things in it comprehend. 
All knowledge is not couched in Moses' 

law, 
The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets 

wrote ; 
The Gentiles also know, and write, and 

teach 
To admiration, led by Nature's light; 
And with the Gentiles much thou must 

converse, 229 

Ruling them by persuasion, as thou mean'st. 
Without their learning, how wilt thou with 

them, 
Or they with thee, hold conversation meet ? 
How wilt thou reason with them, how refute 
Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes ? 
Error by his own arms is best evinced. 
Look once more, ere we leave this specular 

mount, 
Westward, much nearer by south-west; 

behold 
Where on the iEgean shore a city stands, 
Built nobly, pure the air and light the 

soil — 239 

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts 
And eloquence, native to famous wits 
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess, 
City or suburban, studious walks and 

shades. 
See there the olive-grove of Academe, 
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird 
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer 

long; 
There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the 

sound 
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites 
To studious musing; there Ilissus rowls 



274 



PARADISE REGAINED 



His whispering stream. Within the walls 
then view 250 

The schools of ancient sages — his who bred 
Great Alexander to subdue the world, 
Lyceum there; and painted Stoa next. 
There thou shalt hear and learn the secret 

power 
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit 
By voice or hand, and various-measured 

verse, 
iEolian charms and Dorian lyric odes, 
And his who gave them breath, but higher 

sung, 
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called, 
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his 
own. 260 

Thence what the lofty grave Tragedians 

taught 
In chorus or iambic, teachers best 
Of moral prudence, with delight received 
In brief sententious precepts, while they 

treat 
Of fate, and chance, and change in human 

life, 
High actions and high passions best de- 
scribing. 
Thence to the famous Orators repair, 
Those ancient whose resistless eloquence 
Wielded at will that fierce democraty, 
Shook the Arsenal, and fulmined over 
Greece 270 

To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne. 
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear, 
From heaven descended to the low-roofed 

house 
Of Socrates — see there his tenement — 
Whom, well inspired, the Oracle pro- 
nounced 
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued 

forth 
Mellifluous streams, that watered all the 

schools 
Of Academics old and new, with those 
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect 
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe. 280 

These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at 

home, 
Till time mature thee to a kingdom's 

weight; 
These rules will render thee a king com- 
plete 
Within thyself, much more with empire 
joined." 
To whom our Saviour sagely thus re- 
plied : — 



" Think not but that I know these things; 

or, think 
I know them not, not therefore am I short 
Of knowing what I ought. He who re- 
ceives 
Light from above, from the Fountain of 

Light, 
No other doctrine needs, though granted 
true ; 290 

But these are false, or little else but 

dreams, 
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm. 
The first and wisest of them all professed 
To know this only, that he nothing knew; 
The next to fabling fell and smooth con- 
ceits ; 
A third sort doubted all things, though 

plain sense; 
Others in virtue placed felicity, 
But virtue joined with riches and long life ; 
In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease ; 
The Stoic last in philosophic pride, 300 

By him called virtue, and his virtuous man, 
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possess- 
ing, 
Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer, 
As fearing God nor man, contemning all 
Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death 

and life — 
Which, when he lists, he leaves, or boasts 

he can; 
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast, 
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade. 
Alas ! what can they teach, and not mis- 
lead, 309 
Ignorant of themselves, of God much more, 
And how the World began, and how Man 

fell, 
Degraded by himself, on grace depending? 
Much of the Soul they talk, but all awry; 
And in themselves seek virtue; and to 

themselves 
All glory arrogate, to God give none ; 
Rather accuse him under usual names, 
Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite 
Of mortal things. Who, therefore, seeks 

in these 
True wisdom finds her not, or, by delusion 
Far worse, her false resemblance only 
meets, 320 

An empty cloud. However, many books, 
Wise men have said, are wearisome; who 

reads 
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not 
A spirit and judgment equal or superior, 



BOOK FOURTH 



2 75 



(And what he brings what needs he else- 
where seek ?) 
Uncertain and unsettled still remains, 
Deep-versed in books and shallow in him- 
self, 
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys 
And trifles for choice matters, worth a 
sponge, 329 

As children gathering pebbles on the shore. 
Or, if I would delight my private hours 
With music or with poem, where so soon 
As in our native language can I find 
That solace ? All our Law and Story 

strewed 
With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms 

inscribed, 
Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon 
That pleased so well our victor's ear, de- 
clare 
That rather Greece from us these arts de- 
rived — 
111 imitated while they loudest sing 
The vices of their deities, and their own, 
In fable, hymn, or song, so personating 341 
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past 

shame. 
Remove their swelling epithetes, thick-laid 
As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest, 
Thin-sown with aught of profit or delight, 
Will far be found unworthy to compare 
With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excel- 
ling, 
Where God is praised aright and godlike 

men, 
The Holiest of Holies and his Saints 
(Such are from God inspired, not such from 
thee); 350 

Unless where moral virtue is expressed 
By light of Nature, not in all quite lost. 
Their orators thou then extoll'st as those 
The top of eloquence — statists indeed, 
And lovers of their country, as may seem; 
But herein to our Prophets far beneath, 
As men divinely taught, and better teach- 
ing 
The solid rules of civil government, 
In their majestic, unaffected style, 359 

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome. 
In them is plainest taught, and easiest 

learnt, 
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it 

so, 
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat; 
These only, with our Law, best form a 
king." 



So spake the Son of God; but Satan, now 
Quite at a loss (for all his darts were 

spent), 
Thus to our Saviour, with stern brow, re- 
plied : — 
" Since neither wealth nor honour, arms 
nor arts, 
Kingdom nor empire, pleases thee, nor 

aught 
By me proposed in life contemplative 370 
Or active, tended on by glory or fame, 
What dost thou in this world ? The Wil- 
derness 
For thee is fittest place: I found thee 

there, 
And thither will return thee. Yet remem- 
ber 
What I foretell thee ; soon thou shalt have 

cause 
To wish thou never hadst rejected, thus 
Nicely or cautiously, my offered aid, 
Which would have set thee in short time 

with ease 
On David's throne, or throne of all the 

world, 
Now at full age, fulness of time, thy sea- 
son, 380 
When prophecies of thee are best fulfilled. 
Now, contrary — if I read aught in heaven, 
Or heaven write aught of fate — by what 

the stars 
Voluminous, or single characters 
In their conjunction met, give me to spell, 
Sorrows and labours, opposition, hate, 
Attends thee; scorns, reproaches, injuries, 
Violence and stripes, and, lastly, cruel 

death. 
A kingdom they portend thee, but what 

kingdom, 
Real or allegoric, I discern not; 390 

Nor when: eternal sure — as without end, 
Without beginning; for no date prefixed 
Directs me in the starry rubric set." 

So saying, he took (for still he knew his 
power 
Not yet expired), and to the Wilderness 
Brought back, the Son of God, and left 

him there, 
Feigning to disappear. Darkness now rose, 
As daylight sunk, and brought in louring 

Night, 
Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both, 
Privation mere of light and absent day. 400 
Our Saviour, meek, and with untroubled 
mind 



276 



PARADISE REGAINED 



After his aerie jaunt, though hurried sore, 
Hungry and cold, betook him to his rest, 
Wherever, under some concourse of shades, 
Whose branching arms thick intertwined 

might shield 
From dews and damps of night his shel- 
tered head; 
But, sheltered, slept in vain; for at his 

head 
The Tempter watched, and soon with ugly 

dreams 
Disturbed his sleep. And either tropic 

now 
'Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven; 

the clouds 410 

From many a horrid rift abortive poured 
Fierce rain with lightning mixed, water 

with fire 
In ruin reconciled; nor slept the winds 
Within their stony caves, but rushed abroad 
From the four hinges of the world, and fell 
On the vexed wilderness, whose tallest 

pines, 
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest 

oaks, 
Bowed their stiff necks, loaden with stormy 

blasts, 
Or torn up sheer. Ill wast thou shrouded 

then, 
O patient Son of God, yet only stood'st 420 
Unshaken ! Nor yet staid the terror there : 
Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round 
Environed thee; some howled, some yelled, 

some shrieked, 
Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while 

thou 
Sat'st unappalled in calm and sinless peace. 
Thus passed the night so foul, till Morning 

fair 
Came forth with pilgrim steps, in amice 

grey, 
Who with her radiant finger stilled the 

roar 
Of thunder, chased the clouds, and laid the 

winds, 
And griesly spectres, which the Fiend had 

raised 430 

To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire. 
And now the sun with more effectual beams 
Had cheered the face of earth, and dried 

the wet 
From drooping plant, or dropping tree ; the 

birds, 
Who all things now behold more fresh and 

green, 



After a night of storm so ruinous, 
Cleared up their choicest notes in bush and 

spray, 
To gratulate the sweet return of morn. 
Nor yet, amidst this joy and brightest 

morn, 
Was absent, after all his mischief done, 440 
The Prince of Darkness; glad would also 

seem 
Of this fair change, and to our Saviour 

came; 
Yet with no new device (they all were 

spent), 
Rather by this his last affront resolved, 
Desperate of better course, to vent his rage 
And mad despite to be so oft repelled. 
Him walking on a sunny hill he found, 
Backed on the north and west by a thick 

wood; 
Out of the wood he starts in wonted shape, 
And in a careless mood thus to him said: — 
" Fair morning yet betides thee, Son of 
God, 45 1 

After a dismal night. I heard the wrack, 
As earth and sky would mingle; but my- 
self 
Was distant; and these flaws, though mor- 
tals fear them, 
As dangerous to the pillared frame of Hea- 
ven, 
Or to the Earth's dark basis underneath, 
Are to the main as inconsiderable 
And harmless, if not wholesome, as a 

sneeze 
To man's less universe, and soon are gone. 
Yet, as being ofttimes noxious where they 
light 460 

On man, beast, plant, wasteful and turbu- 
lent, 
Like turbulencies in the affairs of men, 
Over whose heads they roar, and seem to 

point, 
They oft fore-signify and threaten ill. 
This tempest at this desert most was bent; 
Of men at thee, for only thou here dwell'st. 
Did I not tell thee, if thou didst reject 
The perfect season offered with my aid 
To win thy destined seat, but wilt prolong 
All to the push of fate, pursue thy way 470 
Of gaining David's throne no man knows 

when 
(For both the when and how is nowhere 

told), 
Thou shalt be what thou art ordained, no 
doubt; 



BOOK FOURTH 



277 



For Angels have proclaimed it, but con- 
cealing 

The time and means ? Each act is right- 
liest done 

Not when it must, but when it may be 
best. 

If thou observe not this, be sure to find 

What I foretold thee — many a hard as- 
say 

Of dangers, and adversities, and pains, 

Ere thou of Israel's sceptre get fast hold; 

Whereof this ominous night that closed 
thee round, 481 

So many terrors, voices, prodigies, 

May warn thee, as a sure foregoing sign." 
So talked he, while the Son of God went 
on, 

And staid not, but in brief him answered 
thus: — 
"Me worse than wet thou find'st not; 
other harm 

Those terrors which thou speak'st of did 
me none. 

I never feared they could, though noising 
loud 

And threatening nigh : what they can do as 
signs 

Betokening or ill-boding I contemn 490 

As false portents, not sent from God, but 
thee; 

Who, knowing I shall reign past thy pre- 
venting, 

Obtrud'st thy offered aid, that I, accept- 
ing 

At least might seem to hold all power of 
thee, 

Ambitious Spirit ! and would'st be thought 
my God; 

And storm'st, refused, thinking to terrify 

Me to thy will ! Desist (thou art dis- 
cerned, 

And toil'st in vain), nor me in vain molest." 
To whom the Fiend, now swoln with 
rage, replied: — 

" Then hear, O Son of David, virgin- 
born ! 500 

For Son of God to me is yet in doubt. 

Of the Messiah I have heard foretold 

By all the Prophets; of thy birth, at length 

Announced by Gabriel, with the first I 
knew, 

And of the angelic song in Bethlehem field, 

On thy birth-night, that sung thee Saviour 
born. 

From that time seldom have I ceased to eye 



Thy infancy, thy childhood, and thy youth, 
Thy manhood last, though yet in private 

bred; 
Till, at the ford of Jordan, whither all 510 
Flocked to the Baptist, I among the rest 
(Though not to be baptized), by voice from 

Heaven 
Heard thee pronounced the Son of God 

beloved. 
Thenceforth I thought thee worth my 

nearer view 
And narrower scrutiny, that I might learn 
In what degree or meaning thou art called 
The Son of God, which bears no single 

sense. 
The Son of God I also am, or was; 
And, if I was, I am; relation stands: 
All men are Sons of God; yet thee I 

thought 520 

In some respect far higher so declared. 
Therefore I watched thy footsteps from 

that hour, 
And followed thee still on to this waste 

wild, 
Where, by all best conjectures, I collect 
Thou art to be my fatal enemy. 
Good reason, then, if I beforehand seek 
To understand my adversary, who 
And what he is; his wisdom, power, intent; 
By parle or composition, truce or league, 
To win him, or win from him what I can. 
And opportunity I here have had 531 

To try thee, sift thee, and confess have 

found thee 
Proof against all temptation, as a rock 
Of adamant and as a centre, firm 
To the utmost of mere man both wise and 

good, 
Not more; for honours, riches, kingdoms, 

glory, 
Have been before contemned, and may 

again. 
Therefore, to know what more thou art 

than man, 
Worth naming Son of God by voice from 

Heaven, 
Another method I must now begin." 540 
So saying, he caught him up, and, with- 
out wing 
Of hippogrif, bore through the air sublime, 
Over the wilderness and o'er the plain, 
Till underneath them fair Jerusalem, 
The Holy City, lifted high her towers, 
And higher yet the glorious Temple reared 
Her pile, far off appearing like a mount 



278 



PARADISE REGAINED 



Of alablaster, topt with golden spires: 
There, on the highest pinnacle, he set 
The Son of God, and added thus in scorn: — 
"There stand, if thou wilt stand; to 

stand upright 551 

Will ask thee skill. I to thy Father's 

house 
Have brought thee, and highest placed: 

highest is best. 
Now shew thy progeny; if not to stand, 
Cast thyself down. Safely, if Son of God ; 
For it is written, ' He will give command 
Concerning thee to his Angels; in their 

hands 
They shall uplift thee, lest at any time 
Thou chance to dash thy foot against a 

stone.' " 
To whom thus Jesus: " Also it is writ- 
ten, 560 
1 Tempt not the Lord thy God.' " He said, 

and stood; 
But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell. 
As when Earth's son, Antaeus (to compare 
Small things with greatest), in Irassa 

strove 
With Jove's Alcides, and, oft foiled, still 

rose, 
Receiving from his mother Earth new 

strength, 
Fresh from his fall, and fiercer grapple 

joined, 
Throttled at length in the air expired and 

fell, 
So, after many a foil, the Tempter proud, 
Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride 
Fell whence he stood to see his victor 

fall; 57 i 

And, as that Theban monster that proposed 
Her riddle, and him who solved it not de- 
voured, 
That once found out and solved, for grief 

and spite 
Cast herself headlong from the Ismenian 

steep, 
So, strook with dread and anguish, fell the 

Fiend, 
And to his crew, that sat consulting, 

brought 
Joyless triumphals of his hoped success, 
Ruin, and desperation, and dismay, 
Who durst so proudly tempt the Son of 

God. 580 

So Satan fell; and straight a fiery globe 
Of Angels on full sail of wing flew nigh, 
Who on their plumy vans received Him soft 



From his uneasy station, and upbore, 

As on a floating couch, through the blithe 

air; 
Then, in a flowery valley, set him down 
On a green bank, and set before him spread 
A table of celestial food, divine 
Ambrosial fruits fetched from the Tree of 

Life, 
And from the Fount of Life ambrosial 
drink, 59 o 

That soon refreshed him wearied, and re- 
paired 
What hunger, if aught hunger, had im- 
paired, 
Or thirst; and, as he fed, Angelic quires 
Sung heavenly anthems of his victory 
Over temptation and the Tempter proud: — 
" True Image of the Father, whether 
throned 
In the bosom of bliss, and light of light 
Conceiving, or, remote from Heaven, en- 
shrined 
In fleshly tabernacle and human form, 599 
Wandering the wilderness — whatever place, 
Habit, or state, or motion, still expressing 
The Son of God, with Godlike force endued 
Against the attempter of thy Father's 

throne 
And thief of Paradise ! Him long of old 
Thou didst debel, and down from Heaven 

cast 
With all his army; now thou hast avenged 
Supplanted Adam, and, by vanquishing 
Temptation, hast regained lost Paradise, 
And frustrated the conquest fraudulent. 
He never more henceforth will dare set 

foot 610 

In paradise to tempt; his snares are broke. 
For, though that seat of earthly bliss be 

failed, 
A fairer Paradise is founded now 
For Adam and his chosen sons, whom thou, 
A Saviour, art come down to reinstall; 
Where they shall dwell secure, when time 

shall be, 
Of tempter and temptation without fear. 
But thou, Infernal Serpent ! shalt not long 
Rule in the clouds. Like an autumnal 

star, 
Or lightning, thou shalt fall from Heaven, 

trod down 620 

Under his feet. For proof, ere this thou 

feel'st 
Thy wound (yet not thy last and deadliest 

wound) 



BOOK FOURTH 



279 



By this repulse received, and hokTst in Hell 
No triumph; in all her gates Abaddon rues 
Thy bold attempt. Hereafter learn with 

awe 
To dread the Son of God. He, all un- 
armed, 
Shall chase thee, with the terror of his 

voice, 
From thy demoniac holds, possession foul — 
Thee and thy legions; yelling_ they shall 

And beg to hide them in a herd of swine, 
Lest he command them down into the 
Deep, 631 



Bound, and to torment sent before their 
time. 

Hail, Son of the Most High, heir of both 
Worlds, 

Queller of Satan ! On thy glorious work 

Now enter, and begin to save Mankind." 
Thus they the Son of God, our Saviour 
meek, 

Sung victor, and, from heavenly feast re- 
freshed, 

Brought on his way with joy. He, unob- 
served, 

Home to his mother's house private re- 
turned. 



SAMSON AGONISTES 

A DRAMATIC POEM 

Aristot. Poet. cap. 6. TpaycpSia /jli/xtjctis irpd^eoos <r-rou8atos, &e. — Tragcedia 
est imitatio actionis serise, &c, per misericordiara et metum perficiens talium 
affectuum lustrationem. 

I 667- I 67 I 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



The story of Samson was, as has been 
before stated (introductory biography, p. 
xxxi.), one of those to which Milton gave 
attention after his return from Italy, while 
he was in search of a subject for a great 
epic or drama. At that time, apparently, 
he considered it little, since the jottings are 
unaccompanied by any hints as to treat- 
ment. He did, however, look at five phases 
of Samson's history, as is indicated by the 
note : " Samson Pursophorus, or Hybristes, 
or Samson Marrying, or Ramath-Lechi, 
Judges xv., Dagonalia, Judges xvi." Sam- 
son Pursophorus, or the Bearer of the Fire- 
brand, would have dealt with the hero's 
exploit of firing the corn ; Samson Hy- 
bristes, or the Violent, with his bearing 
away of the gates of Gaza, or some similar 
action of disdain for his Philistine foes; 
Samson Marrying, with his earlier life, and 
his marriage with the woman of Timnath; 
Ramath-Lechi, with his slaughter of the 
Philistines at Lehi; Dagonalia, with his 
destruction of the temple and his death. 
When, about 1667, Milton's mind again 
recurred to this subject, he saw a double 
reason for choosing the last of these epi- 
sodes. Samson's story, continued to its 
last stage, offered a striking parallelism 
with his own; and besides this personal 
reason for the selection, there was the ob- 
vious artistic one, that the last subject held 
in solution the other four. Besides being 
in itself a unified action, with a magnifi- 
cent climax, and hence naturally adapted 
to dramatic treatment, it also carried along 
with it a great fund of previous story, to 
be drawn upon at the dramatist's will for 
the purpose of enriching the rather meagre 



283 



action with semi-narrative episodes. The 
exact nature of the drama which Milton 
proposed to write made this circumstance 
one of vital importance. 

Even in the days of Comus, even when 
praising Jonson's learned sock and Shake- 
speare's wild wood-notes, Milton seems 
never to have had a real sympathy for the 
English stage. Since that time, the stage 
had degenerated rapidly, until the closing 
of the theatres in 1642 by decree of the 
Long Parliament. When they reopened at 
the Restoration it was to produce a spe- 
cies of cynical comedy even more hateful to 
the Puritan sense than the morbid trage- 
dies of Ford upon which they had closed. 
Never in sympathy with the type of drama 
to which he found the stage pledged, Mil- 
ton was now removed by all conceivable 
motives from the desire to produce an act- 
ing play. He was left free, therefore, from 
the restrictions of stage-craft; and he took 
advantage of that freedom to give his work 
a kind of interest inadmissible except in 
the closet-drama, but often very effective 
there. To the purely dramatic episode of 
Samson's death he added, by way of remi- 
niscence on Samson's part or on the part 
of the Chorus, the epic material which lay 
in Samson's life up to the time of his fall- 
ing prisoner to the Philistines. Almost 
every episode of that life, from his birth 
onward, is touched upon; and the immedi- 
ate action goes on against a background of 
past events which add incalculably to its 
dignity and pathos. The meagreness of its 
action has been frequently objected to in 
Samson Agonistes ; the objection leaves out 
of account the peculiar type of drama 
which it represents. We have said that 
Paradise Regained is a kind of disguised 



284 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



drama, a dramatic epic; it is equally true 
that Samson Agonistes holds in solution a 
large amount of narrative not directly con- 
nected with the development, but serving 
to light up the hero's character, — that it 
is, in other words, a kind of epical drama. 
The mighty central figure is made to loom 
before our imagination not only by the 
pure dramatist's device of appropriate ac- 
tion, but by the narrative poet's — one 
might almost say the novelist's — devices 
of cumulative incident, illustration, and 
comment. 

So much for Milton's selection of the 
closet over the stage drama. His selec- 
tion of the classic form over the romantic 
was inevitable. In the first place, the trage- 
dies of Greece and Rome did not lie under 
the stigma of disgrace with which Puritan- 
ism had marked the modern play; at least 
it was possible for Milton to shed over 
the ancient forms of tragedy the hallowing 
association of such names as Plutarch, 
St. Paul, and Gregory Naziauzen, though 
perhaps the elaborateness of his apology 
proves that he did not consider himself, 
even when following in the footsteps of 
Sophocles, safe from the attacks of zeal- 
ous brethren. His original bias toward the 
classic form, shown in the drafts of plays 
which he made in 1640-41, had naturally 
strengthened with age. The turbulence 
and vividness of romantic drama could 
only be distasteful to the blind, defeated 
man of sixty; but into the suppression, the 
low-keyed passion, of ancient tragedy, he 
could throw the daily accents of his own 
heart. Goethe, reading Samson Agonistes 
in his old age, could find no words adequate 
to praise it. It is, indeed, as Dr. Garnett 
observes, an old man's play. The grim- 
ness, the grey imminence of Fate, which 
lies upon ancient tragedy even in its lighter 
moods, is here reenforced by the mood of 
a mind fallen upon evil days, when the 
pitcher is about to be broken at the foun- 
tain. 

With regard to the famous " three uni- 



ties " of Aristotelian criticism, Milton allows 
himself no liberties; so far, at least, as two 
of them are concerned, there can be no 
question. " Unity of time " prescribes that 
the events of a play should cover a space 
of not more than twenty-four hours; the 
action of Samson Agonistes begins at sun- 
rise, and ends about noon, covering, there- 
fore, six or eight hours at the most. 
"Unity of place" is as strictly observed, 
since the whole action passes in front of 
the prison at Gaza. " Unity of action " 
prescribes that the action shall be " com- 
plete and single" (irpa^is fj.ia re Kal 6'Atj). 
This of course excludes at once the un- 
derplot of the Elizabethans, an accessory 
which Milton unequivocally condemns as 
" the poet's error of intermixing comic 
stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, or 
introducing trivial and vulgar persons; 
which by all judicious hath been accounted 
absurd, and brought in without discretion, 
corruptly to gratify the people." It does 
not exclude episodical material, provided 
that such material is organically connected 
with the development of the climax, to- 
ward which classical tragedy was expected 
to move unswervingly from the beginning. 
In this particular, Samson Agonistes has 
not escaped criticism; consideration of the 
points involved will be taken up in the 
analysis of the play below. 

The chorus of Samson is structurally 
different from the choruses of classical 
tragedy. Milton describes it as " mono- 
strophic or, rather, apolelymenon, without 
regard had to strophe, antistrophe, and 
epode, — which were a kind of stanzas 
framed only for the music, then used with 
the Chorus that sung; not essential to the 
poem, and therefore not material." By 
discarding the division into balanced strophe 
and antistrophe, and substituting instead a 
form of verse entirely unhampered even 
by rhyme or by fixed line-length, Milton 
has abandoned the letter in order to follow 
the spirit of the classic chorus; for the free- 
dom of the form allows the Chorus to con- 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



285 



nect itself very intimately with the shifting 
mood of the protagonist, to develop his 
thought or reflect passingly upon his state, 
without forfeiting, even in the shortest pas- 
sages, the lyric element. It is worthy of 
note that Milton follows Sophocles rather 
than his favorite Euripides in making the 
Chorus cling closely to the thought and 
emotion of the play itself, instead of allow- 
ing it to wander away into philosophic gen- 
eralizations only remotely suggested by 
the action in hand. Occasionally, to be 
sure, it does so escape, and these rare 
breakings-away have the effect of wonder- 
fully calming and chastening the crude 
passion of the piece, throwing the particu- 
lar tragedy of the moment back into an 
ideal remoteness where its meaning can be 
seen pure, untroubled by passing emotion. 
It will be noticed, however, that these pas- 
sages occur chiefly after Samson has left 
the stage, while, according to the classical 
precedent, the climax is taking place at a 
distance, or after news of the hero's death 
has been brought. The effect aimed at 
is obviously that of calming the spectator, 
that the play may close in an atmosphere 
not only purged by pity and terror, but 
also calmed and sweetened by abstract 
meditation. The use of the Messenger to 
announce the catastrophe is of course an 
indispensable part of the classic apparatus; 
it is in the passage devoted to him that 
Milton has caught, perhaps more com- 
pletely than anywhere else, the very form 
and pressure of Sophoclean dialogue. Di- 
vision into acts and scenes Milton omits, 
as " referring chiefly to the stage, for which 
this work never was intended;" but the 
fact that he adds, " It suffices if the whole 
drama be found not produced beyond the 
fifth act " shows that he did not neglect 
the requirements of such division. A brief 
analysis will make the act-and-scene struc- 
ture of the drama clear, and will throw 
light also on the question of its unity of 
action. 

The opening speech of Samson, as he is 



led from his prison to spend in the open 
air the few hours of rest which the super- 
stition of his enemies allows him on the 
feast-day of their god, establishes at once 
the key of sombre dejection. The very 
first line makes us realize his pathetic help- 
lessness, and the sense of hopelessness, of 
tcedium vitce, grows to its culmination in the 
famous lines : — 
" O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, 

Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse, 

Without all hope of day ! " 

His helplessness under indignity is empha- 
sized by the fact that he mistakes the ap- 
proaching Chorus for a rabble of his ene- 
mies, come to stare at and insult him ; and 
the chanting of the Chorus, where pity for 
his present state is mingled with celebra- 
tion of his youthful deeds of pride and 
might, deepens the tragic force of the pic- 
ture. Samson's second speech introduces 
the spiritual side of his misery, remorse 
for his sin of weakness. The rest of Act I. 
is taken up with the past history of the 
hero. The elements of his character which 
it impresses upon us are : his wilfulness 
and amorous weakness ; his exultant pride 
of strength ; and his sense of consecration 
to the task of delivering Israel. This act 
ends with Manoa's entrance at line 331. 

The sight of his son's wretchedness 
wrings from Manoa, as he enters, a horri- 
fied exclamation, " O miserable change ! " 
which intensifies the effect of pity already 
produced. The old man's querulous ques- 
tioning of God's dealings with His anointed 
champion brings out a new side of Samson's 
character ; for we see that he accepts his 
suffering nobly, as a just punishment for 
sin. It is a master-stroke of artistic har- 
mony that accomplishes this without dis- 
turbing for a moment the atmosphere of 
sullen gloom surrounding him. At the 
same time, occasion is given for a detailed 
account of his weakness in giving up his 
secret to Dalila. Upon this ensues the first 
of those " provocative " elements, calcu- 
lated to arouse Samson little by little to the 



286 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



height of passion and resolution required 
by the climax ; this is Manoa's reminder 
that for the magnifying of Dagon set apart 
for this feast-day, Samson is indirectly re- 
sponsible, that by reason of his faithless- 
ness an idolatrous abomination shall be set 
above Jehovah. Very skillfully this is made 
to bring out another noble trait of Samson's 
character, namely his impersonal optimism ; 
though hoping nothing for himself, he still 
has heart to believe in the ultimate triumph 
of right: — 

" Dagon hath presumed, 
The overthrown, to enter lists with God, 
His deity comparing and preferring 
Before the God of Abraham. He, be sure, 
Will not connive, or linger, thus provoked, 
But will arise, and his great name assert. 
Dagon must stoop, and shall ere long receive 
Such a discomfit as shall quite despoil him 
Of all these boasted trophies won on me, 
And with confusion blank his worshippers." 

The last four lines should be noticed, 
also, as the first application in the play of 
the Greek principle of Tragic Irony. In 
Samson, as in the Greek tragedies, a story 
is being handled which is perfectly familiar 
to every one. The element of suspense, 
therefore, on which a modern playwright 
largely depends, is impossible here, because 
the catastrophe is foreseen and taken for 
granted from the outset. To supply its 
place the Greek tragedians adopted a de- 
vice capable of being used with great 
psychological subtlety; namely, that of put- 
ting into the mouths of the persons of the 
drama words which to themselves, ignorant 
of the future course of events, were trivial, 
but which to the audience had a tragic em- 
phasis because of their bearing upon the 
impending catastrophe. The lines quoted 
above are of this sort, though they lack the 
poignancy usually attaching to tragic or pa- 
thetic irony. The principle is used through- 
out Samson, often with extreme effective- 
ness ; to note and weigh the instances as 
they occur is necessary if we would gain 
from the play the peculiar effect intended, — 
an effect so unparalleled in English drama 



that it costs, and is worth, some pains to 
perceive in completeness. 

In the conversation between Manoa and 
Samson, which takes up the greater part of 
this act, the old man's hopeful looking to 
the future, his plans for ransoming his son 
from captivity, are thrown into relief against 
the listlessness of the hero himself, who 
knows that there is no future for him. 
The conversation ends with his reiteration 
of his deadly weariness, coupled with a 
touching recurrence to the glories of his 
youth. Then follows the most noble chorus 
of the play, beginning, — 

" God of our fathers ! what is man," 

in which Samson's special case is taken as 
a starting point for reflection upon the 
tragic changes everywhere in human for- 
tune. Dalila now appears, and a subtle 
change in the metre and color of the verse 
heralds her approach ; the movement be- 
comes more vivacious, evanescent vowel 
rhymes appear, and epithet and imagery 
take on a more opulent hue. Her trium- 
phant beauty, as she comes 

" Like a stately ship 
Of Tarsus, bound for the isles 
Of Javan or Gadire . . . 
An amber scent of odorous perfume 
Her harbinger," 

is the last touch needed to emphasize the 
wretchedness of the captive. Act II. ends 
with her entrance, at line 731. 

The coming of Dalila is the second pro- 
vocative incident necessary to rouse Sam- 
son to a supreme effort. Upon the por- 
trayal of her character Milton has lavished 
all his art ; she is perhaps the one really 
dramatic creation, endowed with Shake- 
spearean reality of life, to be found in his 
work. Her approach is humble, full of 
penitence and the sweetness of reawakened 
wifely love. First she seeks extenuation 
for her own weakness by reminding Sam- 
son of his ; next, with exquisite casuistry, 
she urges the jealousy of her love as the 
impelling motive of her action, cunningly 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



287 



reenforcing this plea by the further one of 
love of country and religion. Samson re- 
pels her again and again, with a mounting 
passion of abhorrence ; but she refuses to 
be turned away, and at last says humbly, 
" Let me approach at least and touch thy 
hand." When this last consummate simu- 
lacrum of tenderness fails, she throws off 
the mask, and stands in her heartless pride, 
as magnificent in self-justification as Web- 
ster's Vittoria Corombona : — 

" in my country, where I most desire, 
In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath, 
I shall be named among the famousest 
Of women, sung at solemn festivals, 
Living and dead recorded, who, to save 
Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose 
Above the faith of wedlock bands." 

Act III. closes, upon Dalila's departure, 
with a chorus in which Milton's quarrel 
with woman finds its most terrible expres- 
sion. The strophes quiver and groan un- 
der their weight of personal bitterness. As 
we read we are reminded of yet another 
parallelism between Milton and his hero. 
Both had felt overmasteringly in youth 
the power of woman. For both, the crud- 
est irony was the survival of the old long- 
ing, the old cry of the heart and the flesh, 
long after the unworthiness of the thing 
desired seemed proved. The chorus hints 
at this aspect of Samson's anguish in a way 
that illustrates the intimateness with which 
Milton has used his Chorus to interpret the 
subtle shiftings of emotion and thought in 
the mind of his protagonist. After Sam- 
son has dismissed his wife, the Chorus 
muses, — 

"Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange 
power, 
After offence returning, to regain 
Love once possessed, nor can be easily 
Repulsed, without much inward passion felt, 
And secret sting of amorous remorse." 

Act IV. begins at line 1076, after the 
Chorus has heralded the approach of Hara- 
pha. The visit of Dalila has stung Samson 
again to life ; in his passion of resentment, 
he has shaken off the tedium vitce which 



weighed him down. The coming of the 
giant Harapha, the third provocative inci- 
dent, does more: it rouses in him again the 
proud consciousness of power, and fills him 
with lust to use it for revenge. As Hara- 
pha, ceasing from his insults, and frightened 
and discountenanced by Samson's challenge 
to single combat, goes off, the giant utters 
the threat which motives the remainder of 
the play, — 

" By Astaroth, ere long thou shalt lament 
These braveries." . . . 

This closes, at line 1243, what may be con- 
sidered the first scene of Act IV. After 
some talk between Samson and the Chorus 
as to the outcome of Harapha's visit, their 
doubts are resolved by the arrival of the 
Officer, sent by the Lords at Harapha's in- 
stigation. Samson refuses to obey the 
summons and the Officer departs. The re- 
monstrances of the Chorus are of no avail 
to change Samson's decision. But sud- 
denly, as if smitten by a new and absorb- 
ing thought, he changes his mind. His 
words, — 

" Be of good courage; I begin to feel 
Some rousing motions in me, which dispose 
To something extraordinary my thoughts. 
I with this messenger will go along." 

show that a vague scheme of vengeance 
has dawned in his brain. In the Chorus 
which closes the act, a strange hovering 
half-consciousness of what is about to hap- 
pen seems to have been caught from Sam- 
son by sympathy. A very poignant effect 
is produced, too, by the Chorus's recalling at 
this juncture the signs and wonders which 
had long ago attended the hero's birth. 

Act V. opens with line 1445. The most 
striking use of pathetic irony occurs here, 
where Manoa appears and explains his hope 
of ransoming Samson from captivity. While 
the old man is musing over his plans for 
tending his son and making him happy, 
he is interrupted by a great shout in the 
distance, and later by another, still louder. 
The Chorus is conjecturing that mayhap the 
Lord has restored sight to his champion 



288 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



and given hiin power to vanquish the Phi- 
listines, when a Messenger enters to make 
known the catastrophe. The speeches of 
the Messenger, the calmness and reconcili- 
ation of Manoa's tone after his one touch- 
ing cry, — 

" O ! lastly over-strong against thyself," 
and the lyric quietness and elevation of the 
Chorus at the close, are all in the highest 
antique strain. It is impossible to turn 
from the play without feeling that it has 
accomplished that which the motto on the 
title-page declares to be the highest func- 
tion of tragedy, Per misericordiam et metum 
perjiciens talium affectuum lustrationem, — 
Through fear and terror to purge the heart 
of fear and terror. 

Such an analysis, if it has been a true 
one, would seem to settle the question of 
the unity of action in Samson. The visits 
of Dalila and Harapha, so far from being 
purely episodic as they have sometimes 
been treated, are most vital to the denoue- 
ment, besides contributing immensely to 
the understanding of Samson's character 
in several of its phases. The large amount 
of reminiscence concerning Samson's early 
life is also indispensable in the painting of 
that elaborate portrait which constitutes 
the larger unity of the drama. The figure 
of the hero lives, not with the elemental 
typical life common to most of Milton's 
figures, but, one may say, with an idiomatic 
life, a special eloquence of reality. Yet 
its reality impresses us less, perhaps, than 
its monumental quality ; carved larger than 
human, of the grey everlasting rock, it 
stands in its grey world, while the little 
generations of art go by and are forgotten. 

II 

Samson Agonistes contains Milton's most 
studied and artful verse ; but the key in 
which the poem is set is so low, its method 
so restrained, that its most finely calculated 
effects are likely to be passed over unre- 
garded. Even among those persons who 



are neither careless nor unequipped with 
the requisite technical knowledge, misun- 
derstanding of the metrical structure of 
the poem has been frequent. Mr. Robert 
Bridges, on whose treatise entitled Milton's 
Prosody the following paragraphs are 
based, was the first to make clear the very 
simple theory upon which the elaborate 
rhythmical effects of Samson are built up. 
In the typical blank-verse line of ten 
syllables, the stressed syllables fall in the 
even places, but this arrangement may in 
any of the five feet be inverted, so that the 
stressed syllable falls in the odd place. In 
such cases the regular iambic structure 
of the line, e. g., — 

So they in Heav'n their odes and vigils tuned, 

suffers various modifications, as in the fol- 
lowing, where the first and second feet are 
inverted and become trochaic : — 

Irresistible Samson, whom unarmed ; 

or in this, where the second and fourth are 
inverted, and the first foot is weak, i. e. 
lacking a full stress : — 

In their triple degrees ; regions to which. 

This device of inversion, which in Para- 
dise Lost is used sparingly, appears in the 
choruses of Samson persistently, and is 
made, by artful manipulation, to produce 
varied rhythmical effects. In the last line 
quoted above, the first three feet, if taken 
alone, might constitute an anapaestic (y w /) 
rhythm ; and the last two might be read 
either as a single choriambus (/ \^ v /) or 
as a dactyl (/ ^ v^) followed by an extra 
syllable. The combinations of metre made 
possible by the -free use of inversion are, 
it will be seen, very numerous, and of all 
of these Milton has taken advantage. We 
are to consider the whole poem, then, in- 
cluding the choruses, as written in iambic 
metre, except those few lines (less than 
thirty in all) which are in trochaic metre, 
e.g.: — 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



289 



Let us not break in upon him, 
and even these may be considered as iambic 
lines in which inversion has taken place in 
all the feet. Upon this simple iambic 
framework, various rhythms are embroid- 
ered by free inversion; but behind the 
shifting subtleties of rhythm thus intro- 
duced, the regular iambic beat is to be 
imagined as persisting. 

One other variation, not accounted for 
by inversion, must be remembered; i. e. the 
possible substitution of a spondee, or foot 
of two stressed syllables, for the regular 
iambus. This usually occurs after a weak 
foot, e. g., — 

The jaw I of a | dead ass, | their sword | of bone, 

but sometimes in other position, as, for em- 
phasis, in the first foot of the line, — 
/ ' \j r r \j v / 

This, this | is he ; | softly | a while. 

The general aesthetic effect at which 
Milton aimed in all this can be surmised. 
The prevailing mood of the drama is one 
of sombre dejection, and to establish this 
mood the monotonous iteration of the iam- 
bic rhythm is essential. But this prevail- 
ing mood is broken in upon fitfully, either 
by bursts of passionate recollection on the 
part of Samson, or by the lyric animation 
of the chorus. To have adopted for these 
breaks decided singing cadences would have 
introduced a too violent contrast, and de- 
stroyed the sense of oppression at which 
the poet aimed. By preserving the fiction 
of the iambic iteration, and syncopating 
upon it intermittent half-lyric strains, which 
rise above the norm with a certain effort 
and sink back into it with relief, Milton has 
not only kept the integrity of the mood, 
but has made the melancholy deepest at the 
very points where the lines seem to strive 
most to throw off their burden. 

The same artistic motive prompted the 
peculiar use of rhyme in Samson. Nothing 
would more surely have dispelled the grey 



atmosphere in which the poem moves than 
a copious rhyme. Rhyme inevitably en- 
riches verse, makes it more winning and 
vivid. But for that reason Milton does 
not, as a lesser artist would have done, re- 
ject rhyme altogether. He lets it creep 
in, flicker lambently for a moment, then 
disappear, only to return again with the 
same faint-hearted insistence. Sometimes, 
as where the chorus announces the approach 
of Dalila, the rhyme is more copious, as 
befits the description of the woman and the 
richer atmosphere which she brings; but 
the neutral key is preserved by the employ- 
ment of only vowel rhymes, which the ear 
distinguishes with hesitation. 

The length of line is manipulated to the 
same end. A line of any given length, 
kept up without interruption, tends to take 
on what might be called a self-satisfied air. 
The expectation of the reader being con- 
stantly fulfilled, he ceases to expect; the 
lines go their way with resolution. The 
blank-verse line, because of its powerful 
movement, is especially apt to sustain itself 
in this way, and to create an impression of 
confidence the very obverse of that which 
Milton was seeking. In the speculations 
and reflections of the chorus there is some- 
thing excitable and anxious, in the musings 
of the blind Samson something febrile, in- 
termittent, almost peevish, which only the 
lines of varying length could register. 
The prevalence throughout of feminine 
lines, i. e. those ending in an unstressed 
extrametrical syllable, adds to the cumula- 
tive sense of weariness. 

A more formal account may also be given 
of the matter. The falsity of putting a 
thought of whatever dimensions into a line 
of fixed length, and packing or spreading 
it to suit, is obvious. In his blank verse 
Milton had escaped the difficulty by over- 
lapping phrases and sentences variously 
from line to line. The idea might naturally 
occur to him of casting away the fixed line 
altogether, as a useless fiction. Certainly, 
some such liberty as this he sought for him- 



290 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



self when he adopted, in place of the elabo- 
rately constructed choruses of classic drama, 
a chorus of loose structure, capable of fol- 
lowing the thought with supple freedom. 
Probably both sets of motives combined to 
determine the peculiarities of Samson. In 
any case, the drama represents Milton's art 
at its subtlest and maturest. For those who 
are willing to give it the requisite atten- 
tion, it can hardly fail to have a sombre 
fascination, as strong perhaps as the sweeter 
sylvan beguilement of Comus. 



Ill 



The sources of Samson Agonistes, aside 
from the Bible, are few and unimportant. 
The fifth book of the Antiquities of Josephus, 
and the Relation of the traveller Sandys, 
each seem to have furnished a few hints. 
The Historie of Samson, by Francis 
Quarles, a predecessor of Milton's at Cam- 
bridge, may have been glanced into, though 
certainly to no great purpose. For Von- 
del's play of Samson as the inspirer of Sam- 
son Agonistes Mr. Edmundson makes an 
ingenious but unconvincing plea. There 
is ground for belief that Milton knew Ven- 
der's work, and it is possible that the Dutch 
drama revived in him interest in the 
subject which he had meditated more 
than twenty-five years before. The only 
" source " worth much consideration, how- 
ever, is the account given in Judges, chap- 
ters xiii.-xvi. Almost every incident of the 
Bible narrative Milton has worked into 
the texture of the play, either in the text 
or in the choruses. Besides the Officer, 
the Messenger, and the Chorus, the only 
new personage introduced is the giant 
Harapha, whose name Milton manufac- 
tured from the Hebrew word for giant, 
Rapha (2 Samuel, xxi. 15-22). A thorough 
knowledge of the Scripture passages is in- 
dispensable to an understanding of many 
passages of the drama; they are accord- 
ingly subjoined : — 



And the children of Israel did evil again in 
the sight of the Lord ; and the Lord delivered 
them into the hand of the Philistines forty 
years. 

And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the 
family of the Danites, whose name was Ma- 
noah ; and his wife was barren, and bare not. 
And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the 
woman, and said unto her, Behold now, thou 
art barren, and bearest not : but thou shalt con- 
ceive, and bear a son ; and no razor shall come 
on his head : for the child shall be a Nazarite 
unto God from the womb : and he shall begin 
to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philis- 
tines. 

So Manoah took a kid with a meat offering, 
and offered it upon a rock unto the Lord : and 
the angel did wonderously ; and Manoah and his 
wife looked on. For it came to pass, when the 
flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, 
that the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame 
of the altar. And Manoah and his wife looked 
on it, and fell on their faces to the ground. 

And Samson went down to Timnath, and saw 
a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the 
Philistines. And he came up, and told his fa- 
ther and his mother, and said, I have seen a 
woman in Timnath of the daughters of the 
Philistines : now therefore get her for me to 
wife. Then his father and his mother said 
unto him, Is there never a woman among the 
daughters of thy brethren, or among all my 
people, that thou goest to take a wife of the 
uncircumcised Philistines ? And Samson said 
unto his father, Get her for me ; for she pleas- 
eth me well. 

Then went Samson down, and his father and 
his mother, to Timnath, and came to the vine- 
yards of Timnath : and, behold, a young lion 
roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord 
came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he 
would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in 
his hand : but he told not his father or his mo- 
ther what he had done. And he went down, 
and talked with the woman ; and she pleased 
Samson well. 

And after a time he returned to take her, and 
he turned aside to see the carcase of the lion : 
and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and 
honey in the carcase of the lion. 

So his father went down unto the woman: 
and Samson made there a feast ; for so used the 
young men to do. And it came to pass, when 
they saw him, that they brought thirty com- 
panions to be with him. 

And Samson said unto them, I will now put 
forth a riddle unto you : if ye can certainly de- 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



291 



elare it me within the seven days of the feast, 
and find it out, then I will give you thirty sheets 
and thirty change of garments: And he said 
unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, 
and out of the strong came forth sweetness. 
And they could not in three days expound the 
riddle. And it came to pass on the seventh 
day, that they said unto Samson's wife, Entice 
thy husband, that he may declare unto us the 
riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father's house 
with fire. And Samson's wife wept before 
him, and said, Thou dost but hate me, and lov- 
est me not : thou hast put forth a riddle unto 
the children of my people, and hast not told 
it me. And she wept before him the seven 
days, while their feast lasted : and it came to 
pass on the seventh day, that he told her, be- 
cause she lay sore upon him : and she told the 
riddle to the children of her people. And the 
men of the city said unto him on the seventh 
day before the sun went down, What is sweeter 
than honey ? and what is stronger than a lion ? 

And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, 
and he went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty 
men of them, and took their spoil, and gave 
change of garments unto them which expounded 
the riddle. And his anger was kindled, and he 
went up to his father's house. But Samson's 
wife was given to his companion, whom he had 
used as his friend. 

And Samson said concerning them, Now shall 
I be more blameless than the Philistines, though 
I do them a displeasure. And Samson went 
and caught three hundred foxes, and took fire- 
brands and turned tail to tail, and put a fire- 
brand in the midst between two tails. And 
when he had set the brands on fire, he let them 
go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and 
burnt up both the shocks, and also the stand- 
ing corn, with the vineyards and olives. 

And he smote them hip and thigh with a 
great slaughter : and he went down and dwelt 
in the top of the rock Etam. 

Then the Philistines went up, and pitched in 
Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. And 
the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up 
against us ? And they answered, To bind Sam- 
son are we come up, to do to him as he hath 
done to us. Then three thousand men of Judah 
went to the top of the rock Etam, and said to 
Samson, Knowest thou not that the Philistines 
are rulers over us ? what is this that thou hast 
done unto us ? And he said unto them, As 
they did unto me, so have I done unto them. 
And they said unto him, We are come down to 
bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the 
hand of the Philistines. And Samson said unto 



them, Swear unto me, that ye will not fall upon 
me yourselves. And they spake unto him, say- 
ing, No ; but we will bind thee fast, and deliver 
thee into their hand : but surely we will not kill 
thee. And they bound him with two new cords, 
and brought him up from the rock. 

And when he came unto Lehi, the Philistines 
shouted against him : and the Spirit of the Lord 
came mightily upon him, and the cords that 
were upon his arms became as flax that was 
burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off 
his hands. And he found a new jawbone of an 
ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and 
slew a thousand men therewith. And it came 
to pass, that he cast away the jawbone out of 
his hand, and called that place Ramath-lehi. 

And it was told the Gazites, saying, Samson 
is come hither. And they compassed him in, 
and laid wait for him all night in the gate of 
the city, and were quiet all the night, saying, 
In the morning, when it is day, we shall kill 
him. And Samson lay till midnight, and arose 
at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of 
the city, and the two posts, and went away with 
them, bar and all, and put them upon his shoul- 
ders, and carried them up to the top of an hill 
that is before Hebron. 

And it came to pass afterward, that he loved 
a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name 
was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines 
came up unto her, and said unto her, Entice 
him, and see wherein his great strength lieth, 
and by what means we may prevail against 
him, that we may bind him to afflict him : and 
we will give thee every one of us eleven hun- 
dred pieces of silver. 

And Delilah said to Samson, Tell me, I pray 
thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and 
wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict 
thee. And Samson said unto her, If they bind 
me with seven green withes that were never 
dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another 
man. Then the lords of the Philistines brought 
up to her seven green withes which had not been 
dried, and she bound him with them. Now 
there were men lying in wait, abiding with her 
in the chamber. And she said unto him, The 
Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he brake 
the withes, as a thread of tow is broken when 
it toucheth the fire. So his strength was not 
known. And Delilah said unto Samson, Be- 
hold, thou hast mocked me, and told me lies : 
now tell me, I pray thee, wherewith thou 
mightest be bound. And he said unto her, If 
they bind me fast with new ropes that never 
were occupied, then shall I be weak, and be 
as another man. Delilah therefore took new 



292 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



ropes, and bound him therewith, and said unto 
him, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. 
And there were Hers in wait abiding in the 
chamber. And he brake them from off his 
arms like a thread. And Delilah said unto 
Samson, Hitherto thou hast mocked me, and 
told me lies : tell me wherewith thou mightest 
be bound. And he said unto her, If thou weav- 
est the seven locks of my head with the web. 
And she fastened it with the pin, and said unto 
him, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. 
And he awaked out of his sleep, and went away 
with the pin of the beam, and with the web. 

And she said unto him, How canst thou say, 
I love thee, when thine heart is not with me ? 
thou hast mocked me these three times, and 
hast not told me wherein thy great strength 
lieth. And it came to pass, when she pressed 
him daily with her words, and urged him, so 
that his soul was vexed unto death, that he 
told her all his heart, and said unto her, There 
hath not come a razor upon mine head ; for I 
have been a Nazarite unto God from my mo- 
ther's womb : if I be shaven, then my strength 
will go from me, and I shall become weak, and 
be like any other man. And when Delilah saw 
that he had told her all his heart, she sent and 
called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, 
Come up this once, for he hath shewed me all 
his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines 
came up unto her, and brought money in their 
hand. And she made him sleep upon her knees ; 
and she called for a man, and she caused him 
to shave off the seven locks of his head ; and 
she began to afflict him, and his strength went 
from him. And she said, The Philistines be 
upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his 
sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times 
before, and shake myself. And he wist not 
that the Lord was departed from him. 

But the Philistines took him, and put out his 
eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound 



him with fetters of brass ; and he did grind in 
the prison house. Howbeit the hair of his head 
began to grow again after he was shaven. Then 
the lords of the Philistines gathered them to- 
gether for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon 
their god, and to rejoice: for they said, Our 
god hath delivered Samson our enemy into 
our hand. And when the people saw him, they 
praised their god : for they said, Our god hath 
delivered into our hands our enemy, and the 
destroyer of our country, which slew many of 
us. And it came to pass, when their hearts 
were merry, that they said, Call for Samson, 
that he may make us sport. And they called 
for Samson out of the prison house ; and he 
made them sport: and they set him between 
the pillars. And Samson said unto the lad that 
held him by the hand, Suffer me that I may 
feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth, 
that I may lean upon them. Now the house 
was full of men and women ; and all the lords 
of the Philistines were there ; and there were 
upon the roof about three thousand men and 
women, that beheld while Samson made sport. 
And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, 
O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and 
strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, 
God, that I may be at once avenged of the 
Philistines for my two eyes. And Samson took 
hold of the two middle pillars upon which the 
house stood, and on which it was borne up, of 
the one with his right hand, and of the other 
with his left. And Samson said, Let me die 
with the Philistines. And he bowed himself 
with all his might ; and the house fell upon the 
lords, and upon all the people that were therein. 
So the dead which he slew at his death were 
more than they which he slew in his life. Then 
his brethren and all the house of his father 
came down, and took him, and brought him up, 
and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in 
the burying-place of Manoah his father. 



MILTON'S INTRODUCTION 



OF THAT SORT OF DRAMATIC 
POEM CALLED TRAGEDY 

Tragedy, as it was anciently composed, 
hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and 
most profitable of all other Poems ; therefore 
said by Aristotle to be of power, by raising 
pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of 
those and such-like passions — that is, to tem- 



per and reduce them to just measure with a 
kind of delight, stirred up by reading or see- 
ing those passions well imitated. Nor is Na- 
ture wanting in her own effects to make good 
his assertion ; for so, in Physic, things of mel- 
ancholic hue and quality are used against mel- 
ancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt 
humours. Hence philosophers and other grav- 
est writers, as Cicero, Plutarch, and others, 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



! 93 



frequently cite out of tragic poets, both to 
adorn and illustrate their discourse. The 
Apostle Paul himself thought it not unwor- 
thy to insert a verse of Euripides into the text 
of Holy Scripture, 1 Cor. xv. 33 ; and Parae- 
us, commenting on the Revelation, divides the 
whole Book, as a Tragedy, into acts, distin- 
guished each by a Chorus of Heavenly Harp- 
ings and Song between. Heretofore men in 
highest dignity have laboured not a little to 
be thought able to compose a tragedy. Of 
that honour Dionysius the elder was no less 
ambitious than before of his attaining to the 
tyranny. Augustus Caesar also had begun his 
Ajax, but, unable to please his own judgment 
with what he had begun, left it unfinished. 
Seneca, the philosopher, is by some thought 
the author of those tragedies (at least the best 
of them) that go under that name. Gregory 
Nazianzen, a Father of the Church, thought it 
not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to 
write a tragedy, which he entitled Christ Suf- 
fering. This is mentioned to vindicate Tragedy 
from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which 
in the account of many it undergoes at this 
day, with other common Interludes ; happen- 
ing through the poet's error of intermixing 
comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, or 
introducing trivial and vulgar persons : which 
by all judicious hath been counted absurd, and 
brought in without discretion, corruptly to 
gratify the people. And, though ancient Tra- 
gedy use no Prologue, yet using sometimes, in 
case of self-defence or explanation, that which 
Martial calls an Epistle, in behalf of this tra- 



gedy, coming forth after the ancient manner, 
much different from what among us passes for 
best, thus much beforehand may be epistled — 
that Chorus is here introduced after the Greek 
manner, not ancient only, but modern, and still 
in use among the Italians. In the modelling 
therefore of this poem, with good reason, the 
Ancients and Italians are rather followed, as 
of much more authority and fame. The mea- 
sure of verse used in the Chorus is of all sorts, 
called by the Greeks Monostrophic, or rather 
Apolelymenon, without regard had to Strophe, 
Antistrophe, or Epode, — which were a kind of 
stanzas framed only for the music, then used 
with the Chorus that sung ; not essential to 
the poem, and therefore not material ; or, be- 
ing divided into stanzas or pauses, they may 
be called Alloeostropha. Division into act and 
scene, referring chiefly to the stage (to which 
this work never was intended), is here omitted. 
It suffices if the whole drama be found not 
produced beyond the fifth act. Of the style 
and uniformity, and that commonly called the 
plot, whether intricate or explicit — which is 
nothing indeed but such ceconomy, or dispo- 
sition of the fable, as may stand best with veri- 
similitude and decorum — they only will best 
judge who are not unacquainted with ^Eschy- 
lus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three tragic 
poets unequalled yet by any, and the best rule 
to all who endeavour to write Tragedy. The 
circumscription of time, wherein the whole 
drama begins and ends, is, according to ancient 
rule and best example, within the space of 
twenty-four hours. 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



THE ARGUMENT 

Samson, made captive, blind, and now in the prison 
at Gaza, there to labour as in a common workhouse, on 
a festival day, in the general cessation from labour, 
comes forth into the open air, to a place nigh, some- 
what retired, there to sit awhile and bemoan his condi- 
tion. Where he happens at length to be visited by cer- 
tain friends and equals of his tribe, which make the 
Chorus, who seek to comfort him what they can ; then 
by his old father, Manoa, who endeavours the like, and 
withal tells him his purpose to procure his liberty by 
ransom ; lastly, that this feast was proclaimed by the 
Philistines as a day of thanksgiving for their deliver- 
ance from the hands of Samson — which yet more 
troubles him. Manoa then departs to prosecute his en- 
deavour with the Philistian lords for Samson's redemp- 
tion : who, in the meanwhile, is visited by other per- 
sons, and, lastly, by a public officer to require his 
coming to the feast before the lords and people, to play 
or shew his strength in their presence. He at first 
refuses, dismissing the public officer with absolute 
denial to come ; at length, persuaded inwardly that this 
was from God, he yields to go along with him, who 
came now the second time with great threatenings to 
fetch him. The Chorus yet remaining on the place, 
Manoa returns full of joyful hope to procure ere long 



his son's deliverance ; in the midst of which discourse 
an Ebrew comes in haste, confusedly at first, and after- 
wards more distinctly, relating the catastrophe — what 
Samson had done to the Philistines, and by accident to 
himself ; wherewith the Tragedy ends. 



THE PERSONS 



Samson 
Manoa, the father of Samson. 
Dalila, his wife. 
Harapha of Gath. 



Public Officer. 
Messenger. 
Chorus of Danites. 



The Scene, before the Prison in Gaza. 

Sams. A little onward lend thy guiding 

hand 
To these dark steps, a little further on; 
For yonder bank hath choice of sun or 

shade. 
There I am wont to sit, when any chance 
Relieves me from my task of servile toil, 
Daily in the common prison else enjoined me, 
Where I, a prisoner chained, scarce freely 

draw 



294 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



The air, imprisoned also, close and damp, 
Unwholesome draught. But here I feel 

amends — 
The breath of heaven fresh blowing, pure 

and sweet, 10 

With day-spring born; here leave me to 

respire. 
This day a solemn feast the people hold 
To Dagon, their sea-idol, and forbid 
Laborious works. Unwillingly this rest 
Their superstition yields me; hence, with 

leave 
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek 
This unfrequented place to find some 



Ease to the body some, none to the mind 
From restless thoughts, that, like a deadly 

swarm 
Of hornets armed, no sooner found alone 20 
But rush upon me thronging, and pre- 
sent 
Times past, what once I was, and what am 

now. 
Oh, wherefore was my birth from Heaven 

foretold 
Twice by an Angel, who at last, in sight 
Of both my parents, all in flames ascended 
From off the altar where an offering 

burned, 
As in a fiery column charioting 
His godlike presence, and from some great 

act 
Or benefit revealed to Abraham's race ? 
Why was my breeding ordered and pre- 
scribed 30 
As of a person separate to God, 
Designed for great exploits, if I must 

die 
Betrayed, captived, and both my eyes put 

out, 
Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze, 
To grind in brazen fetters under task 
With this heaven-gifted strength ? O glo- 
rious strength, 
Put to the labour of a beast, debased 
Lower than bond-slave ! Promise was 

that I 
Should Israel from Philistian yoke de- 
liver ! 
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find 
him 40 

Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves, 
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke. 
Yet stay; let me not rashly call in doubt 
Divine prediction. What if all foretold 



Had been fulfilled but through mine own 

default ? 
Whom have I to complain of but myself, 
Who this high gift of strength committed 

to me, 
In what part lodged, how easily bereft 

me, 
Under the seal of silence could not keep, 
But weakly to a woman must reveal it, 50 
O'ercome with importunity and tears ? 
O impotence of mind in body strong ! 
But what is strength without a double 

share 
Of wisdom ? Vast, unwieldy, burdensome, 
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall 
By weakest subtleties; not made to rule, 
But to subserve where wisdom bears com- 
mand. 
God, when he gave me strength, to shew 

withal 
How slight the gift was, hung it in my 

hair. 
But peace ! I must not quarrel with the 
will 60 

Of highest dispensation, which herein 
Haply had ends above my reach to know. 
Suffices that to me strength is my bane, 
And proves the source of all my mise- 
ries — 
So many, and so huge, that each apart 
Would ask a life to wail. But, chief of 

all, 
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain ! 
Blind among enemies ! O worse than 

chains, 
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age ! 
Light, the prime work of God, to me is ex- 
tinct, 70 
And all her various objects of delight 
Annulled, which might in part my grief 

have eased. 
Inferior to the vilest now become 
Of man or worm, the vilest here excel 

me: 
They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, ex- 
posed 
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and 

wrong, 
Within doors, or without, still as a fool, 
In power of others, never in my own — 
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than 

half. 
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of 
noon, 80 

Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



2 95 



Without all hope of day ! 

O first - created Beam, and thou great 
Word, 

" Let there be light, and light was over 
all," 

Why am I thus bereaved thy prime de- 
cree ? 

The Sun to me is dark 

And silent as the Moon, 

When she deserts the night, 

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. 

Since light so necessary is to life, 90 

And almost life itself, if it be true 

That light is in the soul, 

She all in every part, why was the sight 

To such a tender ball as the eye confined, 

So obvious and so easy to be quenched, 

And not, as feeling, through all parts dif- 
fused, 

That she might look at will through every 
pore ? 

Then had I not been thus exiled from 
light, 

As in the land of darkness, yet in light, 

To live a life half dead, a living death, 100 

And buried; but, O yet more miserable ! 

Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave ; 

Buried, yet not exempt, 

By privilege of death and burial, 

From worst of other evils, pains, and 
wrongs; 

But made hereby obnoxious more 

To all the miseries of life, 

Life in captivity 

Among inhuman foes. 

But who are these ? for with joint pace I 
hear 1 10 

The tread of many feet steering this 
way; 

Perhaps my enemies, who come to stare 

At my affliction, and perhaps to insult — 

Their daily practice to afflict me more. 
Ckor. This, this is he; softly a while; 

Let us not break in upon him. 

O change beyond report, thought, or be- 
lief ! 

See how he lies at random, carelessly dif- 
fused, 

With languished head unpropt, 

As one past hope, abandoned, 120 

And by himself given over, 

In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds 

O'er-worn and soiled. 

Or do my eyes misrepresent ? Can this 
be he, 



That heroic, that renowned, 
Irresistible Samson ? whom, unarmed, 
No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast, 

could withstand; 
Who tore the lion as the lion tears the 

kid; 
Ran on embattled armies clad in iron, 
And, weaponless himself, 130 

Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery 
Of brazen shield and spear, the hammered 

cuirass, 
Chalybean - tempered steel, and frock of 

mail 
Adamantean proof: 
But safest he who stood aloof, 
When insupportably his foot advanced, 
In scorn of their proud arms and warlike 

tools, 
Spurned them to death by troops. The 

bold Ascalonite 
Fled from his lion ramp; old warriors 

turned 
Their plated backs under his heel, 140 

Or grovelling soiled their crested helmets 

in the dust. 
Then with what trivial weapon came to 

hand, 
The jaw of a dead ass, his sword of bone, 
A thousand foreskins fell, the flower of 

Palestine, 
In Ramath-lechi, famous to this day: 
Then by main force pulled up, and on his 

shoulders bore, 
The gates of Azza, post and massy bar, 
Up to the hill by Hebron, seat of giants 

old — 
No journey of a sabbath-day, and loaded 

so — 
Like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up 

Heaven. 150 

Which shall I first bewail — 
Thy bondage or lost sight, 
Prison within prison 
Inseparably dark ? 

Thou art become (O worst imprisonment !) 
The dungeon of thyself; thy soul 
(Which men enjoying sight oft without 

cause complain) 
Imprisoned now indeed, 
In real darkness of the body dwells, 
Shut up from outward light 160 

To incorporate with gloomy night; 
For inward light, alas ! 
Puts forth no visual beam. 
O mirror of our fickle state, 



296 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



Since man on earth, unparalleled, 

The rarer thy example stands, 

By how much from the top of wondrous 

glory, 
Strongest of mortal men, 
To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art 

fallen. 
For him I reckon not in high estate 170 

Whom long descent of birth, 
Or the sphere of fortune, raises; 
But thee, whose strength, while virtue was 

her mate, 
Might have subdued the Earth, 
Universally crowned with highest praises. 
Sams. I hear the sound of words ; their 

sense the air 
Dissolves unjointed ere it reach my ear. 
Chor. He speaks: let us draw nigh. 

Matchless in might, 
The glory late of Israel, now the grief ! 
We come, thy friends and neighbours not 

unknown, . 180 

From Eshtaol and Zora's fruitful vale, 
To visit or bewail thee; or, if better, 
Counsel or consolation we may bring, 
Salve to thy sores: apt words have power 

to swage 
The tumours of a troubled mind, 
And are as balm to festered wounds. 

Sams. Your coming, friends, revives me ; 

for I learn 
Now of my own experience, not by talk, 
How counterfeit a coin they are who 

" friends " 
Bear in their superscription (of the most 190 
I would be understood). In prosperous 

days 
They swarm, but in adverse withdraw their 

head, 
Not to be found, though sought. Ye see, 

O friends, 
How many evils have enclosed me round; 
Yet that which was the worst now least 

afflicts me, 
Blindness; for, had I sight, confused with 

shame, 
How could I once look up, or heave the 

head, 
Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwracked 
My Vessel trusted to me from above, 
Gloriously rigged, and for a word, a tear, 200 
Fool ! have divulged the secret gift of 

God 
To a deceitful woman ? Tell me, friends, 
Am I not sung and proverbed for a fool 



In every street ? Do they not say, " How 
well 

Are come upon him his deserts " ? Yet 
why? 

Immeasurable strength they might behold 

In me ; of wisdom nothing more than 
mean. 

This with the other should at least have 
paired; 

These two, proportioned ill, drove me trans- 
verse. 
Chor. Tax not divine disposal. Wisest 
men 210 

Have erred, and by bad women been de- 
ceived; 

And shall again, pretend they ne'er so 
wise. 

Deject not, then, so overmuch thyself, 

Who hast of sorrow thy full load besides. 

Yet, truth to say, I oft have heard men 
wonder 

Why thou should 'st wed Philistian women 
rather 

Than of thine own tribe fairer, or as 
fair, 

At least of thy own nation, and as noble. 
Sams. The first I saw at Timna, and she 
pleased 

Me, not my parents, that I sought to wed 220 

The daughter of an Infidel. They knew 
not 

That what I motioned was of God; I knew 

From intimate impulse, and therefore urged 

The marriage on, that, by occasion hence, 

I might begin Israel's deliverance — 

The work to which I was divinely called. 

She proving false, the next I took to wife 

(O that I never had ! fond wish too 
late !) 

Was in the vale of Sorec, Dalila, 

That specious monster, my accomplished 
snare. 230 

I thought it lawful from my former act, 

And the same end, still watching to op- 
press 

Israel's oppressors. Of what now I suf- 
fer 

She was not the prime cause, but I my- 
self, 

Who, vanquished with a peal of words, (O 
weakness !) 

Gave up my fort of silence to a woman. 
Chor. In seeking just occasion to pro- 
voke 

The Philistine, thy country's enemy, 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



297 



Thou never wast remiss, I bear thee wit- 
ness; 
Yet Israel still serves with all his sons. 240 
Sams. That fault I take not on me, but 
transfer 
On Israel's governors and heads of tribes, 
Who, seeing those great acts which God 

had done 
Singly by me against their conquerors, 
Acknowledged not, or not at all consid- 
ered, 
Deliverance offered. I, on the other 

side, 
Used no ambition to commend my deeds; 
The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke 

loud the doer. 
But they persisted deaf, and would not 

seem 
To count them things worth notice, till at 
length 250 

Their lords, the Philistines, with gathered 

powers, 
Entered Judea, seeking me, who then 
Safe to the rock of Etham was retired — 
Not flying, but forecasting in what place 
To set upon them, what advantaged best. 
Meanwhile the men of Judah, to prevent 
The harass of their land, beset me round; 
I willingly on some conditions came 
Into their hands, and they as gladly yield 

me 
To the Uncircumcised a welcome prey, 260 
Bound with two cords. But cords to me 

were threads 
Touched with the flame : on their whole host 

I flew 
Unarmed, and with a trivial weapon felled 
Their choicest youth; they only lived who 

fled. 
Had Judah that day joined, or one whole 

tribe, 
They had by this possessed the Towers of 

Gath, 
And lorded over them whom now they 

serve. 
But what more oft, in nations grown cor- 
rupt, 
And by their vices brought to servitude, 
Than to love bondage more than lib- 
erty — 270 
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty — 
And to despise, or envy, or suspect, 
Whom God hath of his special favour 

raised 
As their deliverer ? If he aught begin, 



How frequent to desert him, and at last 
To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds ! 

Chor. Thy words to my remembrance 
bring 
How Succoth and the fort of Penuel 
Their great deliverer contemned, 
The matchless Gideon, in pursuit 280 

Of Madian, and her vanquished kings; 
And how ingrateful Ephraim 
Had dealt with Jephtha, who by argu- 
ment, 
Not worse than by his shield and spear, 
Defended Israel from the Ammonite, 
Had not his prowess quelled their pride 
In that sore battle when so many died 
Without reprieve, adjudged to death 
For want of well pronouncing Shibboleth. 

Sa?ns. Of such examples add me to the 
roll. 290 

Me easily indeed mine may neglect, 
But God's proposed deliverance not so. 

Chor. Just are the ways of God, 
And justifiable to men, 1 

Unless there be who think not God at all. 
If any be, they walk obscure; 
For of such doctrine never was there school, 
But the heart of the Fool, 
And no man therein doctor but himself. 

Yet more there be who doubt his ways 
not just, 300 

As to his own edicts found contradicting; 
Then give the reins to wandering thought, 
Regardless of his glory's diminution, 
Till, by their own perplexities involved, 
They ravel more, still less resolved, 
But never find self-satisfying solution. 

As if they would confine the Intermina- 
ble, 
And tie him to his own prescript, 
Who made our laws to bind us, not him- 
self, 
And hath full right to exempt 310 

Whomso it pleases him by choice 
From national obstriction, without taint 
Of sin, or legal debt; 

For with his own laws he can best dis- 
pense. 

He would not else, who never wanted 
means, 
Nor in respect of the enemy just cause, 
To set his people free, 
Have prompted this heroic Nazarite, 
Against his vow of strictest purity, 
To seek in marriage that fallacious bride, 320 
Unclean, unchaste. 



298 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



Down, Reason, then; at least, vain rea- 
sonings down; 
Though Reason here aver 
That moral verdit quits her of unclean: 
Unchaste was subsequent; her stain, not 
his. 
But see ! here comes thy reverend sire, 
With careful step, locks white as down, 
Old Manoa: advise 

Forthwith how thou ought'st to receive 
him. 
Sams. Ay me ! another inward grief, 
awaked 330 

With mention of that name, renews the 
assault. 
Man. Brethren and men of Dan (for 
such ye seem 
Though in this uncouth place), if old re- 
spect, 
As I suppose, towards your once gloried 

friend, 
My son, now captive, hither hath informed 
Your younger feet, while mine, cast back 

with age, 
Came lagging after, say if he be here. 
Chor. As signal now in low dejected 
state 
As erst in highest, behold him where he 
lies. 
Man. O miserable change ! Is this the 
man, 340 

That invincible Samson, far renowned, 
The dread of Israel's foes, who with a 

strength 
Equivalent to Angels' walked their streets, 
None offering fight; who, single combatant, 
Duelled their armies ranked in proud array, 
Himself an Army — now unequal match 
To save himself against a coward armed 
At one spear's length ? O ever-failing 

trust 
In mortal strength ! and, oh, what not in 

man 
Deceivable and vain ? Nay, what thing 
good 350 

Prayed for, but often proves our woe, our 

bane ? 
I prayed for children, and thought barren- 
ness 
In wedlock a reproach; I gained a son, 
And such a son as all men hailed me happy : 
Who would be now a father in my stead ? 
Oh, wherefore did God grant me my re- 
quest, 
And as a blessing with such pomp adorned ? 



Why are his gifts desirable, to tempt 
Our earnest prayers, then, given with 

solemn hand 
As graces, draw a scorpion's tail behind ? 360 
For this did the Angel twice descend ? for 

this 
Ordained thy nurture holy, as of a plant 
Select and sacred ? glorious for a while, 
The miracle of men; then in an hour 
Ensnared, assaulted, overcome, led bound, 
Thy foes' derision, captive, poor and blind, 
Into a dungeon thrust, to work with slaves ! 
Alas ! methinks whom God hath chosen 

once 
To worthiest deeds, if he through frailty 

err, 369 

He should not so o'erwhelm, and as a thrall 

Subject him to so foul indignities, 

Be it but for honour's sake of former deeds. 

Sams. Appoint not heavenly disposition, 

father. 
Nothing of all these evils hath befallen me 
But justly; I myself have brought them 

on; 
Sole author I, sole cause. If aught seem 

vile, 
As vile hath been my folly, who have pro- 
faned 
The mystery of God, given me under pledge 
Of vow, and have betrayed it to a woman, 
A Canaanite, my faithless enemy. 380 

This well I knew, nor was at all surprised, 
But warned by oft experience. Did not 

she 
Of Timna first betray me, and reveal 
The secret wrested from me in her highth 
Of nuptial love professed, carrying it 

straight 
To them who had corrupted her, my spies 
And rivals ? In this other was there found 
More faith, who, also in her prime of love, 
Spousal embraces, vitiated with gold, 
Though offered only, by the scent con- 
ceived 390 
Her spurious first-born, Treason against 

me? 
Thrice she assayed, with flattering prayers 

and sighs, 
And amorous reproaches, to win from me 
My capital secret, in what part my strength 
Lay stored, in what part summed, that she 

might, know; 
Thrice I deluded her, and turned to sport 
Her importunity, each time perceiving 
How openly and with what impudence 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



: 99 



She purposed to betray me, and (which was 

worse 
Than undissembled hate) with what con- 
tempt 400 
She sought to make me traitor to myself. 
Yet, the fourth time, when, mustering all 

her wiles, 
With blandished parleys, feminine assaults, 
Tongue-batteries, she surceased not day nor 

night 
To storm me, over-watched and wearied 

out, 
At times when men seek most repose and 

rest, 
I yielded, and unlocked her all my heart, 
Who, with a grain of manhood well re- 
solved, 
Might easily have shook off all her snares; 
But foul effeminacy held me yoked 410 
Her bond-slave. O indignity, O blot 
To Honour and Religion ! servile mind 
Rewarded well with servile punishment ! 
The base degree to which I now am fallen, 
These rags, this grinding, is not yet so base 
As was my former servitude, ignoble, 
Unmanly, ignominious, infamous, 
True slavery; and that blindness worse 

than this, 
That saw not how degenerately I served. 
Man. I cannot praise thy marriage- 
choices, son — 420 
Rather approved them not; but thou didst 

plead 
Divine impulsion prompting how thou 

might'st 
Find some occasion to infest our foes. 
I state not that ; this I am sure — our foes 
Found soon occasion thereby to make thee 
Their captive, and their triumph; thou the 

sooner 
Temptation found'st, or over-potent charms, 
To violate the sacred trust of silence 
Deposited within thee — which to have 

kept 
Tacit was in thy power. True ; and thou 
bear'st 430 

Enough, and more, the burden of that fault, 
Bitterly hast thou paid, and still art pay- 
ing; 
That rigid score. A worse thing yet re- 
mains: 
This day the Philistines a popular feast 
Here celebrate in Gaza, and proclaim 
Great pomp, and sacrifice, and praises loud, 
To Dagon, as their god who hath delivered 



Thee, Samson, bound and blind, into their 

hands — 
Them out of thine, who slew'st them many 

a slain. 
So Dagon shall be magnified, and God, 440 
Besides whom is no god, compared with 

idols, 
Disglorified, blasphemed, and had in scorn 
By the idolatrous rout amidst their wine; 
Which to have come to pass by means of 

thee, 
Samson, of all thy sufferings think the 

heaviest, 
Of all reproach the most with shame that 

ever 
Could have befallen thee and thy father's 

house. 
Sams. Father, I do acknowledge and 

confess 
That I this honour, I this pomp, have 

brought 449 

To Dagon, and advanced his praises high 
Among the Heathen round — to God have 

brought 
Dishonour, obloquy, and oped the mouths 
Of idolists and atheists; have brought 

scandal 
To Israel, diffidence of God, and doubt 
In feeble hearts, propense enough before 
To waver, or fall off and join with idols: 
Which is my chief affliction, shame and 

sorrow, 
The anguish of my soul, that suffers not 
Mine eye to harbour sleep, or thoughts to 

rest. 459 

This only hope relieves me, that the strife 
With me hath end. All the contest is now 
'Twixt God and Dagon. Dagon hath pre- 
sumed, 
Me overthrown, to enter lists with God, 
His deity comparing and preferring 
Before the God of Abraham. He, be sure, 
Will not connive, or linger, thus provoked, 
But will arise, and his great name assert. 
Dagon must stoop, and shall ere long re- 
ceive 
Such a discomfit as shall quite despoil him 
Of all these boasted trophies won on me, 470 
And with confusion blank his Worshipers. 
Man. With cause this hope relieves thee ; 

and these words 
I as a prophecy receive; for God 
(Nothing more certain) will not long defer 
To vindicate the glory of his name 
Against all competition, nor will long 



3°° 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



Endure it doubtful whether God be Lord 
Or Dagon. But for thee what shall be 

done? 
Thou must not in the meanwhile, here 

forgot, 
Lie in this miserable loathsome plight 4 8o 
Neglected. I already have made way 
To some Philistian lords, with whom to 

treat 
About thy ransom. Well they may by this 
Have satisfied their utmost of revenge, 
By pains and slaveries, worse than death, 

inflicted 
On thee, who now no more canst do them 
harm. 
Sams. Spare that proposal, father; spare 
the trouble 
Of that solicitation. Let me here, 
As I deserve, pay on my punishment, 
And expiate, if possible, my crime, 490 

Shameful garrulity. To have revealed 
Secrets of men, the secrets of a friend, 
How heinous had the fact been, how de- 
serving 
Contempt and scorn of all — to be excluded 
All friendship, and avoided as a blab, 
The mark of fool set on his front ! 
But I God's counsel have not kept, his holy 

secret 
Presumptuously have published, impiously, 
Weakly at least and shamefully — a sin 
That Gentiles in their parables condemn 500 
To their Abyss and horrid pains confined. 
Man. Be penitent, and for thy fault con- 
trite ; 
But act not in thy own affliction, son. 
Repent the sin; but, if the punishment 
Thou canst avoid, self-preservation bids; 
Or the execution leave to high disposal, 
And let another hand, not thine, exact 
Thy penal forfeit from thyself. Perhaps 
God will relent, and quit thee all his debt; 
Who ever more approves and more ac- 
cepts 510 
(Best pleased with humble and filial sub- 
mission) 
Him who, imploring mercy, sues for life, 
Than who, self-rigorous, chooses death as 

due; 
Which argues over-just, and self-displeased 
For self-offence more than for God of- 
fended. 
Reject not, then, what offered means who 

knows 
But God hath set before us to return thee 



Home to thy country and his sacred house. 
Where thou may'st bring thy offerings, to 

avert 
His further ire, with prayers and vows re- 
newed. 520 
Sams. His pardon I implore ; but, as for 
life, 
To what end should T seek it ? When in 

strength 
All mortals I excelled, and great in hopes, 
With youthful courage, and magnanimous 

thoughts 
Of birth from Heaven foretold and high 

exploits, 
Full of divine instinct, after some proof 
Of acts indeed heroic, far beyond 
The sons of Anak, famous now and blazed, 
Fearless of danger, like a petty god 529 
I walked about, admired of all, and dreaded 
On hostile ground, none daring my af- 
front — 
Then, swollen with pride, into the snare I 

fell 
Of fair fallacious looks, venereal trains, 
Softened with pleasure and voluptuous life 
At length to lay my head and hallowed 

pledge 
Of all my strength in the lascivious lap 
Of a deceitful Concubine, who shore me, 
Like a tame wether, all my precious fleece, 
Then turned me out ridiculous, despoiled, 
Shaven, and disarmed among my ene- 
mies. 540 
Chor. Desire of wine and all delicious 
drinks, 
Which many a famous warrior overturns, 
Thou could'st repress; nor did the dancing 

ruby, 
Sparkling out-poured, the flavour or the 

smell, 
Or taste, that cheers the heart of gods and 

men, 
Allure thee from the cool crystal'lin stream. 
Sams. Wherever fountain or fresh cur- 
rent flowed 
Against the eastern ray, translucent, pure 
With touch sethereal of Heaven's fiery rod, 
I drank, from the clear milky juice allay- 
ing i 550 
Thirst, and refreshed; nor envied them the 

grape 
Whose heads that turbulent liquor fills 
with fumes. 
Chor. O madness ! to think use of strong- 
est wines 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



301 



And strongest drinks our chief support of 

health, 
When God with these forbidden made 

choice to rear 
His mighty Champion, strong above com- 
pare, 
Whose drink was only from the liquid 
brook ! 
Sams. But what availed this temperance, 
not complete 
Against another object more enticing ? 
What boots it at one gate to make de- 
fence, 560 
And at another to let in the foe, 
Effeminately vanquished ? by which means, 
Now blind, disheartened, shamed, dishon- 
oured, quelled, 
To what can I be useful ? wherein serve 
My nation, and the work from Heaven im- 
posed ? 
But to sit idle on the household hearth, 
A burdenous drone; to visitants a gaze, 
Or pitied object; these redundant locks, 
Robustious to no purpose, clustering down, 
Vain monument of strength; till length of 
years 570 
And sedentary numbness craze my limbs 
To a contemptible old age obscure. 
Here rather let me drudge, and earn my 

bread, 
Till vermin, or the draff of servile food, 
Consume me, and oft-invocated death 
Hasten the welcome end of all my pains. 
Man. Wilt thou then serve the Philis- 
tines with that gift 
Which was expressly given thee to annoy 

them? 
Better at home lie bed-rid, not only idle, 
Inglorious, unimployed, with age out- 
worn. 580 
But God, who caused a fountain at thy 

prayer 
From the dry ground to spring, thy thirst 

to allay 
After the brunt of battel, can as easy 
Cause light again within thy eyes to spring, 
Wherewith to serve him better than thou 

hast. 
And I persuade me so. Why else this 

strength 
Miraculous yet remaining in those locks ? 
His might continues in thee not for naught, 
Nor shall his wondrous gifts be frustrate 
thus. 



Sa7ns. All otherwise to me my thoughts 

portend — 590 

That these dark orbs no more shall treat 

with light, 
Nor the other light of life continue long, 
But yield to double darkness nigh at hand; 
So much I feel my genial spirits droop, 
My hopes all flat: Nature within me seems 
In all her functions weary of herself; 
My race of glory run, and race of shame, 
And I shall shortly be with them that rest. 
Man. Believe not these suggestions, 

which proceed 
From anguish of the mind, and humours 

black 600 

That mingle with thy fancy. I, however, 
Must not omit a father's timely care 
To prosecute the means of thy deliverance 
By ransom or how else: meanwhile becalm, 
And healing words from these thy friends 

admit. 
Sams. Oh, that torment should not be 

confined 
To the body's wounds and sores, 
With maladies innumerable 
In heart, head, breast, and reins, 
But must secret passage find 610 

To the inmost mind, 
There exercise all his fierce accidents, 
And on her purest spirits prey, 
As on entrails, joints, and limbs, 
With answerable pains, but more intense, 
Though void of corporal sense ! 

My griefs not only pain me 
As a lingering disease, 
But, finding no redress, ferment and rage; 
Nor less than wounds immedicable 620 

Rankle, and fester, and gangrene, 
To black mortification. 
Thoughts, my tormentors, armed with 

deadly stings, 
Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts, 
Exasperate, exulcerate, and raise 
Dire inflammation, which no cooling herb 
Or medicinal liquor can assuage, 
Nor breath of vernal air from snowy Alp. 
Sleep hath forsook and given me o'er 
To death's benumbing opium as my only 

cure; 630 

Thence faintings, swoonings of despair, 
And sense of Heaven's desertion. 

I was his nursling once and choice de- 

light, 
His destined from the womb, 



302 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



Promised by heavenly message twice de- 
scending. 
Under his special eye 
Abstemious I grew up and thrived amain; 
He led me on to mightiest deeds, 
Above the nerve of mortal arm, 639 

Against the Uncircumcised, our enemies : 
But now hath cast me off as never known, 
And to those cruel enemies, 
Whom I by his appointment had provoked, 
Left me all helpless, with the irreparable 

loss 
Of sight, reserved alive to be repeated 
The subject of their cruelty or scorn. 
Nor am I in the list of them that hope ; 
Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless. 
This one prayer yet remains, might I be 

heard, 
No long petition — speedy death, 650 

The close of all my miseries and the balm. 
Chor. Many are the sayings of the wise, 
In ancient and in modern books enrolled, 
Extolling patience as the truest fortitude, 
And to the bearing well of all calamities, 
All chances incident to man's frail life, 
Consolatories writ 

With studied argument, and much persua- 
sion sought, 
Lenient of grief and anxious thought. 
But with the afflicted in his pangs their 
sound 660 

Little prevails, or rather seems a tune 
Harsh, and of dissonant mood from his 

complaint, 
Unless he feel within 
Some source of consolation from above, 
Secret refreshings that repair his strength 
And fainting spirits uphold. 

God of our fathers ! what is Man, 
That thou towards him with hand so vari- 
ous — 
Or might I say contrarious ? — 
Temper'st thy providence through his short 
course : C70 

Not evenly, as thou rul'st 
The angelic orders, and inferior creatures 

mute, 
Irrational and brute ? 
Nor do I name of men the common rout, 
That, wandering loose about, 
Grow up and perish as the summer fly, 
Heads without name, no more remembered; 
But such as thou hast solemnly elected, 
With gifts and graces eminently adorned, 
To some great work, thy glory, 680 



And people's safety, which in part they 
effect. 

Yet toward these, thus dignified, thou oft, 

Amidst their highth of noon, 

Changest thy countenance and thy hand, 
with no regard 

Of highest favours past 

From thee on them, or them to thee of ser- 
vice. 
Nor only dost degrade them, or remit 

To life obscured, which were a fair dismis- 
sion, 

But throw'st them lower than thou didst 
exalt them high — 

Unseemly falls in human eye, 690 

Too grievous for the trespass or omission; 

Oft leav'st them to the hostile sword 

Of heathen and profane, their carcasses 

To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captived, 

Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of 
times, 

And condemnation of the ungrateful multi- 
tude. 

If these they scape, perhaps in poverty 

With sickness and disease thou bow'st 
them down, 

Painful diseases and deformed, 

In crude old age; 700 

Though not disordinate, yet causeless suf- 
fering 

The punishment of dissolute days. In fine, 

Just or unjust alike seem miserable, 

For oft alike both come to evil end. 

So deal not with this once thy glorious 
Champion, 

The image of thy strength, and mighty 
minister. 

What do I beg? how hast thou dealt 
already ! 

Behold him in this state calamitous, and 
turn 

His labours, for thou canst, to peaceful end. 

But who is this ? what thing of sea or 

land — 710 

Female of sex it seems — 

That, so bedecked, ornate, and gay, 

Comes this way sailing, 

Like a stately ship 

Of Tarsus, bound for the isles 

Of Javan or Gadire, 

With all her bravery on, and tackle trim, 

Sails filled, and streamers waving, 

Courted by all the winds that hold them 
play; 

An amber scent of odorous perfume 720 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



3°3 



Her harbinger, a damsel train behind ? 
Some rich Philistian matron she may seem; 
And now, at nearer view, no other certain 
Than Dalila thy wife. 

Sams. My wife ! my traitress ! let her 

not come near me. 
Chor. Yet on she moves; now stands and 
eyes thee fixed, 
About to have spoke; but now, with head 

declined, 
Like a fair flower surcharged with dew, 

she weeps, 
And words addressed seem into tears dis- 
solved, 
Wetting the borders of her silken veil. 730 
But now again she makes address to speak. 
Dal. With doubtful feet and wavering 
resolution 
I came, still dreading thy displeasure, 

Samson; 
Which to have merited, without excuse, 
I cannot but acknowledge. Yet, if tears 
May expiate (though the fact more evil 

drew 
In the perverse event than I foresaw), 
My penance hath not slackened, though 

my pardon 
No way assured. But conjugal affection, 
Prevailing over fear and timorous doubt, 740 
Hath led me on, desirous to behold 
Once more thy face, and know of thy estate, 
If aught in my ability may serve 
To lighten what thou suffer'st, and appease 
Thy mind with what amends is in my 

power — 
Though late, yet in some part to recom- 
pense 
My rash but more unfortunate misdeed. 
Sams. Out, out, Hysena ! These are thy 
wonted arts, 
And arts of every woman false like thee — 
To break all faith, all vows, deceive, be- 
tray; 750 
Then, as repentant, to submit, beseech, 
And reconcilement move with feigned re- 
morse, 
Confess, and promise wonders in her 

change — 
Not truly penitent, but chief to try 
Her husband, bow far urged his patience 

bears, 
His virtue or weakness which way to assail : 
Then, with more cautious and instructed 

skill, 
Again transgresses, and again submits; 



That wisest and best men, full oft beguiled, 
With goodness principled not to reject 760 
The penitent, but ever to forgive, 
Are drawn to wear out miserable days, 
Entangled with a poisonous bosom-snake, 
If not by quick destruction soon cut off, 
As I by thee, to ages an example. 

Dal. Yet hear me, Samson; not that I 

endeavour 
To lessen or extenuate my offence, 
But that, on the other side, if it be weighed 
By itself, with aggravations not surcharged, 
Or else with just allowance counter- 
poised, 770 
I may, if possible, thy pardon find 
The easier towards me, or thy hatred less. 
First granting, as I do, it was a weakness 
In me, but incident to all our sex, 
Curiosity, inquisitive, importune' 
Of secrets, then with like infirmity 
To publish them — both common female 

faults — 
Was it not weakness also to make known 
For importunity, that is for naught, 
Wherein consisted all thy strength and 

safety ? 780 

To what I did thou shew'dst me first the 

way. 
But I to enemies revealed, and should not ! 
Nor should'st thou have trusted that to 

woman's frailty: 
Ere I to thee, thou to thyself wast cruel. 
Let weakness, then, with weakness come to 

parle, 
So near related, or the same of kind; 
Thine forgive mine, that men may censure 

thine 
The gentler, if severely thou exact not 
More strength from me than in thyself was 

found. 
And what if love, which thou interpret'st 

hate, 790 

The jealousy of love, powerful of sway 
In human hearts, nor less in mine towards 

thee, 
Caused what I did ? I saw thee mutable 
Of fancy; feared lest one day thou would'st 

leave me 
As her at Timna; sought by all means, 

therefore, 
How to endear, and hold thee to me firmest: 
No better way I saw than by importuning 
To learn thy secrets, get into my power 
Thy key of strength and safety. Thou wilt 

say, 



3°4 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



" Why, then, revealed ? " I was assured 
by those 800 

Who tempted me that nothing was designed 
Against thee but safe custody and hold. 
That made for me; I knew that liberty 
Would draw thee forth to perilous enter- 
prises, 
While I at home sat full of cares and fears, 
Wailing thy absence in my widowed bed ; 
Here I should still enjoy thee, day and 

night, 
Mine and love's prisoner, not the Philis- 
tines', 
Whole to myself, unhazarded abroad, 
Fearless at home of partners in my love. 810 
These reasons in Love's law have passed 

for good, 
Though fond and reasonless to some per- 
haps; 
And love hath oft, well meaning, wrought 

much woe, 
Yet always pity or pardon hath obtained. 
Be not unlike all others, not austere 
As thou art strong, inflexible as steel. 
If thou in strength all mortals dost exceed, 
In uncompassionate anger do not so. 

Sams. How cunningly the Sorceress dis- 
plays 
Her own transgressions, to upbraid me 
mine ! 820 

That malice, not repentance, brought thee 

hither 
By this appears. I gave, thou say'st, the 

example, 
I led the way — bitter reproach, but true ; 
I to myself was false ere thou to me. 
Such pardon, therefore, as I give my folly 
Take to thy wicked deed; which when thou 

seest 
Impartial, self-severe, inexorable, 
Thou wilt renounce thy seeking, and much 

rather 
Confess it feigned. Weakness is thy ex- 
cuse, 
And I believe it — weakness to resist 830 
Philistian gold. If weakness may excuse, 
What murtherer, what traitor, parricide, 
Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead 

it? 
All wickedness is weakness; that plea, 

therefore, 
With God or Man will gain thee no remis- 
sion. 
But love constrained thee ! Call it furious 
rage 



To satisfy thy lust. Love seeks to have 

love; 
My love how could'st thou hope, who took'st 

the way 
To raise in me inexpiable hate, 
Knowing, as needs I must, by thee be- 
trayed ? 840 
In vain thou striv'st to cover shame with 

shame, 
Or by evasions thy crime uncover'st more. 
Dal. Since thou determin'st weakness 
for no plea 
In man or woman, though to thy own con- 
demning, 
Hear what assaults I had, what snares 

besides, 
What sieges girt me round, ere I con- 
sented; 
Which might have awed the best-resolved 

of men, 
The constantest, to have yielded without 

blame. 
It was not gold, as to my charge thou lay'st, 
That wrought with me. Thou know'st the 
Magistrates 850 

And Princes of my country came in person, 
Solicited, commanded, threatened, urged, 
Adjured by all the bonds of civil duty 
And of religion — pressed how just it was, 
How honourable, how glorious, to entrap 
A common enemy, who had destroyed 
Such numbers of our nation: and the Priest 
Was not behind, but ever at my ear, 
Preaching how meritorious with the gods 
It would be to ensnare an irreligious 860 
Dishonourer of Dagon. What had I 
To oppose against such powerful argu- 
ments ? 
Only my love of thee held long debate, 
And combated in silence all these reasons 
With hard contest. At length, that 

grounded maxim, 
So rife and celebrated in the mouths 
Of wisest men, that to the public good 
Private respects must yield, with grave 

authority 
Took full possession of me, and prevailed; 
Virtue, as I thought, truth, duty, so enjoin- 
ing. 870 
Sams. I thought where all thy circling 
wiles would end — 
In feigned religion, smooth hypocrisy ! 
But, had thy love, still odiously pretended, 
Been, as it ought, sincere, it would have 
taught thee 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



305 



Far other reasonings, brought forth other 
deeds. 

I, before all the daughters of my tribe 

And of my nation, chose thee from among 

My enemies, loved thee, as too well thou 
knew'st; 

Too well ; unbosomed all my secrets to thee, 

Not out of levity, but overpowered 880 

By thy request, who could deny thee 
nothing; 

Yet now am judged an enemy. Why, 
then, 

Didst thou at first receive me for thy hus- 
band — 

Then, as since then, thy country's foe pro- 
fessed ? 

Being once a wife, for me thou wast to 
leave 

Parents and country; nor was I their sub- 
ject, 

Nor under their protectiou, but my own; 

Thou mine, not theirs. If aught against 
my life 

Thy country sought of thee, it sought un- 
justly, 

Against the law of nature, law of na- 
tions; 890 

No more thy country, but an impious crew 

Of men conspiring to uphold their state 

By worse than hostile deeds, violating the 
ends 

For which our country is a name so dear; 

Not therefore to be obeyed. But zeal 
moved thee; 

To please thy gods thou didst it ! Gods 
unable 

To acquit themselves and prosecute their 
foes 

But by ungodly deeds, the contradiction 

Of their own deity, Gods cannot be — 

Less therefore to be pleased, obeyed, or 
feared. 900 

These false pretexts and varnished colours 
failing, 

Bare in thy guilt, how foul must thou ap- 
pear ! 
Dal. In argument with men a woman 
ever 

Goes by the worse, whatever be her cause. 
Sams. For want of words, no doubt, or 
lack of breath ! 

Witness when I was worried with thy 
peals. 
Dal. I was a fool, too rash, and quite 
mistaken 



In what I thought would have succeeded 

best. 
Let me obtain forgiveness of thee, Samson ; 
Afford me place to shew what recom- 
pense 910 
Towards thee I intend for what I have 

misdone, 
Misguided. Only what remains past cure 
Bear not too sensibly, nor still insist 
To afflict thyself in vain. Though sight 

be lost, 
Life yet hath many solaces, enjoyed 
Where other senses want not their de- 
lights — 
At home, in leisure and domestic ease, 
Exempt from many a care and chance to 

which 
Eyesight exposes, daily, men abroad. 919 
I to the Lords will intercede, not doubting 
Their favourable ear, that I may fetch thee 
From forth this loathsome prison-house, to 

abide 
With me, where my redoubled love and 

care, 
With nursing diligence, to me glad office, 
May ever tend about thee to old age, 
With all things grateful cheered, and so 

supplied 
That what by me thou hast lost thou least 

shalt miss. 
Sams. No, no; of my condition take no 

care; 
It fits not; thou and I long since are twain; 
Nor think me so unwary or accursed 930 
To bring my feet again into the snare 
Where once I have been caught. I know 

thy trains, 
Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils. 
Thy fair enchanted cup, and warbling 

charms, 
No more on me have power; their force is 

nulled; 
So much of adder's wisdom I have learned, 
To fence my ear against thy sorceries. 
If in my flower of youth and strength, 

when all men 
Loved, honoured, feared me, thou alone 

could hate me, 
Thy husband, slight me, sell me, and 

forgo me, 94 o 

How would'st thou use me now, blind, and 

thereby 
Deceivable, in most things as a child 
Helpless, thence easily contemned and 

scorned, 



3°<5 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



And last neglected ! How would'st thou 

insult, 
When I must live uxorious to thy will 
In perfet thraldom ! how again betray me, 
Bearing my words and doings to the lords 
To gloss upon, and, censuring, frown or 

smile ! 
This gaol I count the house of Liberty 
To thine, whose doors my feet shall never 
enter. 950 

Dal. Let me approach at least, and touch 

thy hand. 
Sams. Not for thy life, lest fierce remem- 
brance wake 
My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint. 
At distance I forgive thee ; go with that ; 
Bewail thy falsehood, and the pious works 
It hath brought forth to make thee mem- 
orable 
Among illustrious women, faithful wives; 
Cherish thy hastened widowhood with the 

gold 
Of matrimonial treason: so farewell. 
Dal. I see thou art implacable, more 
deaf 960 

To prayers than winds and seas. Yet 

winds to seas 
Are reconciled at length, and sea to shore: 
Thy anger, unappeasable, still rages, 
Eternal tempest never to be calmed. 
Why do I humble thus myself, and, suing 
For peace, reap nothing but repulse and 

hate, 
Bid go with evil omen, and the brand 
Of infamy upon my name denounced ? 
To mix with thy concernments I desist 
Henceforth, nor too much disapprove my 
own. 970 

Fame, if not double - faced, is double- 
mouthed, 
And with contrary blast proclaims most 

deeds; 
On both his wings, one black, the other 

white, 
Bears greatest names in his wild aerie flight. 
My name, perhaps, among the Circumcised 
In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering Tribes, 
To all posterity may stand defamed, 
With malediction mentioned, and the blot 
Of falsehood most unconjugal traduced. 
But in my country, where I most desire, 980 
In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath, 
I shall be named among the famousest 
Of women, sung at solemn festivals, 
Living and dead recorded, who, to save 



Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose 
Above the faith of wedlock bands; my tomb 
With odours visited and annual flowers; 
Not less renowned than in Mount Ephraim 
Jael, who, with inhospitable guile, 
Smote Sisera sleeping, through the temples 
nailed. 99 o 

Nor shall I count it heinous to enjoy 
The public marks of honour and reward 
Conferred upon me for the piety 
Which to my country I was judged to have 

shewn. 
At this whoever envies or repines, 
I leave him to his lot, and like my own. 
Chor. She 's gone — a manifest Serpent 
by her sting 
Discovered in the end, till now concealed. 
Sams. So let her go. God sent her to 
debase me, 
And aggravate my folly, who committed 1000 
To such a viper his most sacred trust 
Of secrecy, my safety, and my life. 

Chor. Yet beauty, though injurious, hath 
strange power, 
After offence returning, to regain 
Love once possessed, nor can be easily 
Repulsed, without much inward passion felt, 
And secret sting of amorous remorse. 
Sams. Love-quarrels oft in pleasing con- 
cord end; 
Not wedlock-treachery endangering life. 
Chor. It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, 
wit, 10 10 

Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest 

merit, 
That woman's love can win, or long in- 
herit; 
But what it is, hard is to say, 
Harder to hit, 

Which way soever men refer it, 
(Much like thy riddle, Samson) in one day 
Or seven though one should musing sit. 

If any of these, or all, the Timnian bride 
Had not so soon preferred 
Thy Paranymph, worthless to thee com- 
pared, 1020 
Successor in thy bed, 
Nor both so loosely disallied 
Their nuptials, nor this last so treacher- 
ously 
Had shorn the fatal harvest of thy head. 
Is it for that such outward ornament 
Was lavished on their sex, that inward gifts 
Were left for haste unfinished, judgment 
scant, 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



307 



Capacity not raised to apprehend 

Or value what is best, 

In choice, but of test to affect the wrong? 1030 

Or was too much of self-love mixed, 

Of constancy no root infixed, 

That either they love nothing, or not long ? 

Whate'er it be, to wisest men and best, 
Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin 

veil, 
Soft, modest, meek, demure, 
Once joined, the contrary she proves — a 

thorn 
Intestine, far within defensive arms 
A cleaving mischief, in his way to virtue 
Adverse and turbulent; or by her charms 
Draws him awry, enslaved 104 1 

With dotage, and his sense depraved 
To folly and shameful deeds, which ruin 

ends. 
What pilot so expert but needs must wreck, 
Embarked with such a steers-mate at the 

helm? 
Favoured of Heaven who finds 
One virtuous, rarely found, 
That in domestic good combines ! 
Happy that house ! his way to peace is 

smooth : 
But virtue which breaks through all oppo- 
sition, 1050 
And all temptation can remove, 
Most shines and most is acceptable above. 

Therefore God's universal law 
Gave to the man despotic power 
Over his female in due awe, 
Nor from that right to part an hour, 
Smile she or lour: 
So shall he least confusion draw 
On his whole life, not swayed 
By female usurpation, nor dismayed. 1060 
But had we best retire ? I see a storm. 
Sams. Fair days have oft contracted 

wind and rain. 
Chor. But this another kind of tempest 

brings. 
Sams. Be less abstruse; my riddling 

days are past. 
Chor. Look now for no inchanting voice, 

nor fear 
The bait of honeyed words; a rougher 

tongue 
Draws hitherward; I know him by his 

stride, 
The giant Harapha of Gath, his look 
Haughty, as is his pile high-built and 

proud. 



Comes he in peace ? What wind hath 
blown him hither 1070 

I less conjecture than when first I saw 
The sumptuous Dalila floating this way: 
His habit carries peace, his brow defi- 
ance. 
Sams. Or peace or not, alike to me he 

comes. 
Chor. His fraught we soon shall know: 

he now arrives. 
Har. I come not, Samson, to condole thy 
chance, 
As these perhaps, yet wish it had not been, 
Though for no friendly intent. I am of 

Gath; 
Men call me Harapha, of stock renowned 
As Og, or Anak, and the Emims old 1080 
That Kiriathaim held. Thou know'st me 

now, 
If thou at all art known. Much I have 

heard 
Of thy prodigious might and feats per- 
formed, 
Incredible to me, in this displeased, 
That I was never present on the place 
Of those encounters, where we might have 

tried 
Each other's force in camp or listed field; 
And now am come to see of whom such 

noise 
Hath walked about, and each limb to sur- 
vey, 
If thy appearance answer loud report. 1090 
Sams. The way to know were not to see, 

but taste. 
Har. Dost thou already single me ? I 
thought 
Gyves and the mill had tamed thee. O 

that fortune 
Had brought me to the field where thou art 

famed 
To have wrought such wonders with an 



ass s jaw 



I should have forced thee soon wish other 

arms, 
Or left thy carcass where the ass lay thrown ; 
So had the glory of prowess been recovered 
To Palestine, won by a Philistine 
From the unforeskinned race, of whom thou 

bear'st noo 

The highest name for valiant acts. That 

honour, 
Certain to have won by mortal duel from 

thee, 
I lose, prevented by thy eyes put out. 



3<* 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



Sams. Boast not of what thou would'st 
have done, but do 

What then thou would'st ; thou seest it in 
thy hand. 
Har. To combat with a blind man I dis- 
dain, 

And thou hast need much washing to be 
touched. 
Sams. Such usage as your honourable 
Lords 

Afford me, assassinated and betrayed; 

Who durst not with their whole united 
powers i no 

In fight withstand me single and unarmed, 

Nor in the house with chamber-ambushes 

Close -banded durst attack me, no, not 
sleeping, 

Till they had hired a woman with their 
gold, 

Breaking her marriage-faith, to circumvent 
me. 

Therefore, without feign'd shifts, let be as- 
signed 

Some narrow place enclosed, where sight 
may give thee, 

Or rather flight, no great advantage on 
me; 

Then put on all thy gorgeous arms, thy 
helmet 

And brigandine of brass, thy broad haber- 
geon, II20 

Vant-brass and greaves and gauntlet; add 

thy spear, 
A weaver's beam, and seven-times-folded 

shield : 
I only with an oaken staff will meet thee, 
And raise such outcries on thy clattered 

iron, 
Which long shall not withhold me from thy 

head, 
That in a little time, while breath remains 

thee, 
Thou oft shalt wish thyself at Gath, to 

boast 
Again in safety what thou would'st have 

done 
To Samson, but shalt never see Gath more. 
Har. Thou durst not thus disparage 

glorious arms 1130 

Which greatest heroes have in battel worn, 
Their ornament and safety, had not spells 
And black inchantments, some magician's 

art, 
Armed thee or charmed thee strong, which 

thou from Heaven 



Feign'dst at thy birth was given thee in thy 

hair, 
Where strength can least abide, though all 

thy hairs 
Were bristles ranged like those that ridge 

the back 
Of chafed wild boars or ruffled porcupines. 
Sams. I know no spells, use no forbidden 

arts; 
My trust is in the Living God, who gave 

me, 1 140 

At my nativity, this strength, diffused 
No less through all my sinews, joints, and 

bones, 
Than thine, while I preserved these locks 

unshorn, 
The pledge of my unviolated vow. 
For proof hereof, if Dagon be thy god, 
Go to his temple, invocate his aid 
With solemnest devotion, spread before 

him 
How highly it concerns his glory now 
To frustrate and dissolve these magic 

spells, 1 149 

Which I to be the power of Israel's God 
Avow, and challenge Dagon to the test, 
Offering to combat thee, his Champion 

bold, 
With the utmost of his godhead seconded: 
Then thou shalt see, or rather to thy sorrow 
Soon feel, whose God is strongest, thine or 

mine. 
Har. Presume not on thy God. What- 

e'er he be, 
Thee he regards not, owns not, hath cut off 
Quite from his people, and delivered up 
Into thy enemies' hand; permitted them 
To put out both thine eyes, and fettered 

send thee 1160 

Into the common prison, there to grind 
Among the slaves and asses, thy comrades, 
As good for nothing else, no better service 
With those thy boisterous locks; no worthy 

match 
For valour to assail, nor by the sword 
Of noble warrior, so to stain his honour, 
But by the barber's razor best subdued. 
Sams. All these indignities, for such they 

are 
From thine, these evils I deserve and more, 
Acknowledge them from God inflicted on 

me 1 170 

Justly, yet despair not of his final pardon, 
Whose ear is ever open, and his eye 
Gracious to re-admit the suppliant; 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



3°9 



In confidence whereof I once again 
Defy thee to the trial of mortal fight, 
By combat to decide whose god is God, 
Thine, or whom I with Israel's sons adore. 
Har. Fair honour that thou dost thy God, 
in trusting 
He will accept thee to defend his cause, 
A murtherer, a revolter, and a robber ! 1 1S0 
Sams. Tongue-doughty giant, how dost 

thou prove me these ? 
Har. Is not thy nation subject to our 
Lords ? 
Their magistrates confessed it when they 

took thee 
As a league-breaker, and delivered bound 
Into our hands; for hadst thou not com- 
mitted 
Notorious murder on those thirty men 
At Ascalon, who never did thee harm, 
Then, like a robber, stripp'dst them of 

their robes ? 
The Philistines, when thou hadst broke the 

league, 
Went up with armed powers thee only seek- 
ing, i i 9 o 
To others did no violence nor spoil. 

Sams. Among the daughters of the Phi- 
listines £ 
I chose a wife, which arguecfme no foe, 
And in your city held my nuptial feast; 
But your ill-meaning politician lords, 
Under pretence of bridal friends and guests, 
Appointed to await me thirty spies, 
Who, threatening cruel death, constrained 

the bride 
To wring from me, and tell to them, my 

secret, 
That solved the riddle which I had pro- 
posed. 1200 
When I perceived all set on enmity, 
As on my enemies, wherever chanced, 
I used hostility, and took their spoil, 
To pay my underminers in their coin. 
My nation was subjected to your lords ! 
It was the force of conquest; force with 

force 
Is well ejected when the conquered can. 
But I, a private person, whom my country 
As a league-breaker gave up bound, pre- 
sumed 
Single rebellion, and did hostile acts ! 12 10 
I was no private, but a person raised, 
With strength sufficient, and command 

from Heaven, 
To free my country. If their servile minds 



Me, their Deliverer sent, would not re- 
ceive, 
But to their masters gave me up for 

nought, 
The unworthier they; whence to this day 

they serve. 
I was to do my part from Heaven assigned, 
And had performed it if my known offence 
Had not disabled me, not all your force. 
These shifts refuted, answer thy appellant, 
Though by his blindness maimed for high 

attempts, 122 1 

Who now defies thee thrice to single fight, 
As a petty enterprise of small enforce. 
Har. With thee, a man condemned, a 

slave enrolled, 
Due by the law to capital punishment ? 
To fight with thee no man of arms will 

deign. 
Sams. Cam'st thou for this, vain boaster, 

to survey me, 
To descant on my strength, and give thy 

verdit ? 
Come nearer; part not hence so slight in- 
formed ; 
But take good heed my hand survey not 

thee. 1230 

Har. O Baal-zebub ! can my ears unused 

Hear these dishonours, and not render 

death ? 
Sams. No man withholds thee; nothing 

from thy hand 
Fear I incurable ; bring up thy van ; 
My heels are fettered, but my fist is free. 
Har. This insolence other kind of answer 

fits. 
Sams. Go, baffled coward, lest I run 

upon thee, 
Though in these chains, bulk without spirit 

vast, 
And with one buffet lay thy structure 

low, 
Or swing thee in the air, then dash thee 

down, 1240 

To the hazard of thy brains and shattered 

sides. 
Har. By Astaroth, ere long thou shalt 

lament 
These braveries, in irons loaden on thee. 
Ckor. His Giantship is gone somewhat 

crest-fallen, 
Stalking with less unconscionable strides, 
And lower looks, but in a sultry chafe. 
Sams. I dread him not, nor all his giant 

brood, 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



Though fame divulge him father of five 

sons, 
All of gigantic size, Goliah chief. 

Chor. He will directly to the lords, I 
fear, 1250 

And with malicious counsel stir them up 
Some way or other yet further to afflict 
thee. 
Sams. He must allege some cause, and 
offered fight 
Will not dare mention, lest a question rise 
Whether he durst accept the offer or not; 
And that he durst not plain enough ap- 
peared. 
Much more affliction than already felt 
They cannot well impose, nor I sustain, 
If they intend advantage of my labours, 
The work of many hands, which earns my 
keeping, 1260 

With no small profit daily to my owners. 
But come what will; my deadliest foe will 

prove 
My speediest friend, by death to rid me 

hence; 
The worst that he can give to me the best. 
Yet so it may fall out, because their end 
Is hate, not help to me, it may with mine 
Draw their own ruin who attempt the deed. 
Chor. O, how comely it is, and how re- 
viving 
To the spirits of just men long oppressed, 
When God into the hands of their de- 
liverer 1270 
Puts invincible might, 

To quell the mighty of the earth, the op- 
pressor, 
The brute and boisterous force of violent 

men, 
Hardy and industrious to support 
Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue 
The righteous, and all such as honour 

truth ! 
He all their ammunition 
And feats of war defeats, 
With plain heroic magnitude of mind 
And celestial vigour armed; 1280 

Their armouries and magazins contemns, 
Renders them useless, while 
With winged expedition 
Swift as the lightning glance he executes 
His errand on the wicked, who, surprised, 
Lose their defence, distracted and amazed. 

But patience is more oft the exercise 
Of saints, the trial of their fortitude, 
Making them each his own deliverer, 



1290 



And victor over all 

That tyranny or fortune can inflict. 

Either of these is in thy lot, 

Samson, with might endued 

Above the sons of men ; but sight bereaved 

May chance to number thee with those 

Whom Patience finally must crown. 

This Idol's day hath been to thee no day 

of rest, 
Labouring thy mind 
More than the working day thy hands. 
And yet, perhaps, more trouble is behind; 
For I descry this way 1301 

Some other tending; in his hand 
A sceptre or quaint staff he bears, 
Comes on amain, speed in his look. 
By his habit I discern him now 
A public officer, and now at hand. 
His message will be short and voluble. 
Off". Ebrews, the prisoner Samson here I 

seek. 
Chor. His manacles remark him; there 

he sits. 
Off. Samson, to thee our Lords thus bid 

me say: 13 10 

This day to Dagon is a solemn feast, 
With sacrifices, triumph, pomp, and games ; 
Thy strength they know surpassing human 

rate, 
And now some public proof thereof require 
To honour this great feast, and great as- 
sembly. 
Rise, therefore, with all speed, and come 

along, 
Where I will see thee heartened and fresh 

clad, 
To appear as fits before the illustrious 

Lords. 
Sams. Thou know'st I am an Ebrew; 

therefore tell them 
Our law forbids at their religious rites 1320 
My presence ; for that cause I cannot come. 
Off. This answer, be assured, will not 

content them. 
Sams. Have they not sword-players, and 

every sort 
Of gymnic artists, wrestlers, riders, runners, 
Jugglers and dancers, antics, mummers, 

mimics, 
But they must pick me out, with shackles 

tired, 
And over-laboured at their public mill, 
To make them sport with blind activity ? 
Do they not seek occasion of new quarrels, 
On my refusal, to distress me more, 1330 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



3" 



Or make a game of my calamities ? 
Return the way thou cam'st; I will not 
come. 
Off. Regard thyself; this will offend them 

highly. 
Sams. Myself ! my conscience, and inter- 
nal peace. 
Can they think me so broken, so debased 
With corporal servitude, that my mind 

ever 
Will condescend to such absurd com- 
mands ? 
Although their drudge, to be their fool or 

jester, 
And, in my midst of sorrow and heart- 
grief, 
To shew them feats, and play before their 
god — 1340 

The worst of all indignities, yet on me 
Joined with extreme contempt ! I will not 
come. 
Off. My message was imposed on me 
with speed, 
Brooks no delay: is this thy resolution ? 
Sams. So take it with what speed thy 

message needs. 
Off. I am sorry what this stoutness will 

produce. 
Sains. Perhaps thou shalt have cause to 

sorrow indeed. 
Chor. Consider, Samson ; matters now 
are strained 
Up to the highth, whether to hold or break. 
He 's gone, and who knows how he may 
report 1350 

Thy words by adding fuel to the flame ? 
Expect another message, more imperious, 
More lordly thundering than thou well 
wilt bear. 
Sams. Shall I abuse this consecrated gift 
Of strength, again returning with my hair 
After my great transgression — so requite 
Favour renewed, and add a greater sin 
By prostituting holy things to idols, 
A Nazarite, in place abominable, 
Vaunting my strength in honour to their 
Dagon ? 1360 

Besides how vile, contemptible, ridiculous, 
What act more execrably unclean, pro- 
fane ? 
Chor. Yet with this strength thou serv'st 
the Philistines, 
Idolatrous, uncircumcised, unclean. 

Sams. Not in their idol-worship, but by 
labour 



Honest and lawful to deserve my food 
Of those who have me in their civil power. 
Chor. Where the heart joins not, out- 
ward acts defile not. 
Sams. Where outward force constrains, 
the sentence holds: 
But who constrains me to the temple of 
Dagon, , 37 o 

Not dragging ? The Philistian Lords com- 
mand: 
Commands are no constraints. If I obey 

them, 
I do it freely, venturing to displease 
God for the fear of Man, and Man prefer, 
Set God behind; which, in his jealousy, 
Shall never, unrepented, find forgiveness. 
Yet that he may dispense with me, or thee, 
Present in temples at adolatrous rites 
For some important cause, thou need'st not 
doubt. 
Chor. How thou wilt here come off sur- 
mounts my reach. 1380 
Sams. Be of good courage; I begin to 
feel 
Some rousing motions in me, which dispose 
To something extraordinary my thoughts. 
I with this messenger will go along — 
Nothing to do, be sure, that may dishonour 
Our Law, or stain my vow of Nazarite. 
If there be aught of presage in the mind, 
This day will be remarkable in my life 
By some great act, or of my days the last. 
Chor. In time thou hast resolved: the 
man returns. 1390 
Off. Samson, this second message from 
our Lords 
To thee I am bid say: Art thou our slave, 
Our captive, at the public mill our drudge, 
And dar'st thou, at our sending and com- 
mand, 
Dispute thy coming? Come without de- 
lay; 
Or we shall find such engines to assail 
And hamper thee, as thou shalt come of 

force, 
Though thou wert firmlier fastened than a 
rock. 
Sams. I could be well content to try 
their art, 
Which to no few of them would prove per- 
nicious; 1400 
Yet, knowing their advantages too many, 
Because they shall not trail me through 

their streets 
Like a wild beast, I am content to go. 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



Masters' commands come with a power re- 
sistless 
To such as owe them absolute subjection; 
And for a life who will not change his pur- 
pose ? 
(So mutable are all the ways of men !) 
Yet this be sure, in nothing to comply 
Scandalous or forbidden in our Law. 

Off. I praise thy resolution. Doff these 
links: 1410 

By this compliance thou wilt win the Lords 
To favour, and perhaps to set thee free. 
Sams. Brethren, farewell. Your com- 
pany along 
I will not wish, lest it perhaps offend them 
To see me girt with friends; and how the 

sight 
Of me, as of a common enemy, 
So dreaded once, may now exasperate them 
I know not. Lords are lordliest in their 

wine ; 
And the well-feasted priest then soonest 

fired 
With zeal, if aught religion seem con- 
cerned; 1420 
No less the people, on their holy-days, 
Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable. 
Happen what may, of me expect to hear 
Nothing dishonourable, impure, unworthy 
Our God, our Law, my nation, or myself; 
The last of me or no I cannot warrant. 

Ckor. Go, and the Holy One 
Of Israel be thy guide 
To what may serve his glory best, and 

spread his name 
Great among the Heathen round; 1430 

Send thee the Angel of thy birth, to stand 
Fast by thy side, who from thy father's 

field 
Rode up in flames after his message told 
Of thy conception, and be now a shield 
Of fire; that Spirit that first rushed on 

thee 
In the camp of Dan, 
Be efficacious in thee now at need ! 
For never was from Heaven imparted 
Measure of strength so great to mortal 

seed, 

As in thy wondrous actions hath been seen. 

But wherefore comes old Manoa in such 

haste 144 1 

With youthful steps ? Much livelier than 

erewhile 
He seems: supposing here to find his son, 
Or of him bringing to us some glad news ? 



Man. Peace with you, brethren ! My 

inducement hither 
Was not at present here to find my son, 
By order of the Lords new parted hence 
To come and play before them at their 

feast. 
I heard all as I came ; the city rings, 1449 
And numbers thither flock: I had no will, 
Lest I should see him forced to things un- 
seemly. 
But that which moved my coming now was 

chiefly 
To give ye part with me what hope I have 
With good success to work his liberty. 
Chor. That hope would much rejoice us 

to partake 
With thee. Say, reverend sire; we thirst 

to hear. 
Man. I have attempted, one by one, 

the Lords, 
Either at home, or through the high street 

passing, 
With supplication prone and father's tears, 
To accept of ransom for my son, their pris- 
oner. 1460 
Some much averse I found, and wondrous 

harsh, 
Contemptuous, proud, set on revenge and 

spite ; 
That part most reverenced Dagon and his 

priests : 
Others more moderate seeming, but their 

aim 
Private reward, for which both God and 

State 
They easily would set to sale: a third 
More generous far and civil, who confessed 
They had enough revenged, having reduced 
Their foe to misery beneath their fears; 
The rest was magnanimity to remit, 1470 
If some convenient ransom were proposed. 
What noise or shout was that ? It tore 

the sky. 
Chor. Doubtless the people shouting to 

behold 
Their once great dread, captive and blind 

before them, 
Or at some proof of strength before them 

shown. 
Man. His ransom, if my whole inherit- 
ance 
May compass it, shall willingly be paid 
And numbered down. Much rather I shall 

choose 
! To live the poorest in my tribe, than richest 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



3*3 



And he in that calamitous prison left. i 4 8o 

No, I am fixed not to part hence without 
him. 

For his redemption all my patrimony, 

If need be, I am ready to forgo 

And quit. Not wanting him, I shall want 
nothing. 
Chor. Fathers are wont to lay up for 
their sons ; 

Thou for thy son art bent to lay out all: 

Sons wont to nurse their parents in old 
age; 

Thou in old age car'st how to nurse thy 
son, 

Made older than thy age through eye-sight 
lost. 
Man. It shall be my delight to tend his 
eyes, 1490 

And view him sitting in his house, en- 
nobled 

With all those high exploits by him 
achieved, 

And on his shoulders waving down those 
locks 

That of a nation armed the strength con- 
tained. 

And I persuade me God hath not per- 
mitted 

His strength again to grow up with his hair 

Garrisoned round about him like a camp 

Of faithful soldiery, were not his purpose 

To use him further yet in some great ser- 
vice — 

Not to sit idle with so great a gift 1500 

Useless, and thence ridiculous, about him. 

And, since his strength with eye-sight was 
not lost, 

God will restore him eye - sight to his 
strength. 
Chor. Thy hopes are not ill founded, nor 
seem vain, 

Of his delivery, and thy joy thereon 

Conceived, agreeable to a father's love; 

In both which we, as next, participate. 
Alan. I know your friendly minds, and 
. . . O, what noise ! 

Mercy of Heaven ! what hideous noise was 
that? 

Horribly loud, unlike the former shout. 15 10 
Chor. Noise call you it, or universal 
groan, 

As if the whole inhabitation perished ? 

Blood, death, and deathful deeds, are in 
that noise, 

Ruin, destruction at the utmost point. 



Alan. Of ruin indeed methought I heard 
the noise. 

Oh ! it continues; they have slain my son. 
Chor. Thy son is rather slaying them: 
that outcry 

From slaughter of one foe could not as- 
cend. 
Man. Some dismal accident it needs 
must be. 

What shall we do — stay here, or run and 
see ? 1520 

Chor. Best keep together here, lest, run- 
ning thither, 

We unawares run into danger's mouth. 

This evil on the Philistines is fallen: 

From whom could else a general cry be 
heard ? 

The sufferers, then, will scarce molest us 
here; 

From other hands we need not much to 
fear. 

What if, his eye-sight (for to Israel's God 

Nothing is hard) by miracle restored, 

He now be dealing dole among his foes, 

And over heaps of slaughtered walk his 

way ? 1530 

Alan. That were a joy presumptuous to 

be thought. 
Chor. Yet God hath wrought things as 
incredible 

For his people of old; what hinders now ? 
Alan. He can, I know, but doubt to think 
he will; 

Yet hope w r ould fain subscribe, and tempts 
belief. 

A little stay will bring some notice hither. 
Chor. Of good or bad so great, of bad 
the sooner; 

For evil news rides post, while good news 
baits. 

And to our wish I see one hither speed- 
ing— 

An Ebrew, as I guess, and of our tribe. 
Alessenger. O, whither shall I run, or 
which way fly 1541 

The sight of this so horrid spectacle, 

Which erst rny eyes beheld, and yet be- 
hold ? 

For dire imagination still pursues me. 

But providence or instinct' of nature seems, 

Or reason, though disturbed and scarce 
consulted, 

To have guided me aright, I know not 
how, 

To thee first, reverend Manoa, and to these 



3^4 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



My countrymen, whom here I knew re- 
maining, 
As at some distance from the place of 
horror, 1550 

So in the sad event too much concerned. 
Man. The accident was loud, and here 
before thee 
With rueful cry; yet what it was we hear 

not. 
No preface needs; thou seest we long to 
know. 
Mess. It would burst forth; but I re- 
cover breath, 
And sense distract, to know well what I 
utter. 
Man. Tell us the sum; the circumstance 

defer. 
Mess. Gaza yet stands; but all her sons 
are fallen, 
All in a moment overwhelmed and fallen. 
Man. Sad ! but thou know'st to Israel- 
ites not saddest 1560 
The desolation of a hostile city. 

Mess. Feed on that first; there may in 

grief be surfeit. 
Man. Relate by whom. 
Mess. By Samson. 

Man. That still lessens 

The sorrow, and converts it nigh to joy. 
Mess. Ah ! Manoa, I refrain too sud- 
denly 
To utter what will come at last too soon, 
Lest evil tidings, with too rude irruption 
Hitting thy aged ear, should pierce too 
deep. 
Man. Suspense in news is torture; speak 

them out. 

Mess. Then take the worst in brief: 

Samson is dead. 1570 

Man. The worst indeed ! O, all my 

hope 's defeated 

To free him hence ! but Death, who sets all 

free, 
Hath paid his ransom now and full dis- 
charge. 
What windy joy this day had I conceived, 
Hopeful of his delivery, which now proves 
Abortive as the first-born bloom of spring 
Nipt with the lagging rear of winter's 

frost ! 
Yet, ere I give the reins to grief, say first 
How died he; death to life is crown or 

shame. 
All by him fell, thou say'st; by whom fell 
he ? i 5 8o 



What glorious hand gave Samson his 
death's wound ? 
Mess. Unwounded of his enemies he fell. 
Man. Wearied with slaughter, then, or 

how ? explain. 
Mess. By his own hands. 
Man. Self-violence ! What cause 

Brought him so soon at variance with him- 
self 

Among his foes ? 

Mess. Inevitable cause — 

At once both to destroy and be destroyed. 

The edifice, where all were met to see 
him, 

Upon their heads and on his own he pulled. 
Man. O lastly over-strong against thy- 
self ! 1590 

A dreadful way thou took'st to thy re- 
venge. 

More than enough we know; but, while 
things yet 

Are in confusion, give us, if thou canst, 

Eye-witness of what first or last was done, 

Relation more particular and distinct. 
Mess. Occasions drew me early to this 
city; 

And, as the gates I entered with sun-rise, 

The morning trumpets festival proclaimed 

Through each high street. Little I had 
dispatched, 

When all abroad was rumoured that this 
day 1600 

Samson should be brought forth, to shew 
the people 

Proof of his mighty strength in feats and 
games. 

I sorrowed at his captive state, but minded 

Not to be absent at that spectacle. 

The building was a spacious theatre, 

Half round on two main pillars vaulted 
high, 

With seats where all the Lords, and each 
degree 

Of sort, might sit in order to behold; 

The other side was open, where the throng 

On banks and scaffolds under sky might 
stand: 16 10 

I among these aloof obscurely stood. 

The feast and noon grew high, and sacrifice 

Had filled their hearts with mirth, high 
cheer, and wine, 

When to their sports they turned. Imme- 
diately 

Was Samson as a public servant brought, 

In their state livery clad: before him pipes 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



3i5 



And timbrels; on each side went armed 
guards; 

Both horse and foot before him and behind, 

Archers and slingers, cataphracts, and 
spears. 

At sight of him the people with a shout 

Rifted the air, clamouring their god with 
praise, 1621 

Who had made their dreadful enemy their 
thrall. 

He patient, but undaunted, where they led 
him, 

Came to the place; and what was set be- 
fore him, 

Which without help of eye might be as- 
sayed, 

To heave, pull, draw, or break, he still 
performed 

All with incredible, stupendious force, 

None daring to appear antagonist. 

At length, for intermission sake, they led 
him 

Between the pillars; he his guide re- 
quested 1630 

(For so from such as nearer stood we 
heard), 

As over-tired, to let him lean a while 

With both his arms on those two massy 
pillars, 

That to the arched roof gave main sup- 
port. 

He unsuspicious led him; which when Sam- 
son 

Felt in his arms, with head a while en- 
clined, 

And eyes fast fixed, he stood, as one who 
prayed, 

Or some great matter in his mind revolved: 

At last, with head erect, thus cried aloud: — 

" Hitherto, Lords, what your commands 
imposed 1640 

I have performed, as reason was, obeying, 

Not without wonder or delight beheld; 

Now, of my own accord, such other trial 

I mean to shew you of my strength yet 
greater 

As with amaze shall strike all who behold." 

This uttered, straining all his nerves, he 
bowed; 

As with the force of winds and waters pent 

When mountains tremble, those two massy 
pillars 

With horrible convulsion to and fro 

He tugged, he shook, till down they came, 
and drew ^50 



The whole roof after them with burst of 

thunder 
Upon the heads of all who sat beneath, 
Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, or 

priests, 
Their choice nobility and flower, not only 
Of this, but each Philistian city round, 
Met from all parts to solemnize this feast. 
Samson, with these iramixed, inevitably 
Pulled down the same destruction on him- 
self; 
The vulgar only scaped, who stood with- 
out. 
Chor. O dearly bought revenge, yet 
glorious ! 1660 

Living or dying thou hast fulfilled 
The work for which thou wast foretold 
To Israel, and now liest victorious 
Among thy slain self-killed; 
Not willingly, but tangled in the fold 
Of dire Necessity, whose law in death con- 
joined 
Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number 

more 
Thau all thy life had slain before. 

Semichor. While their hearts were jo- 
cund and sublime, 
Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine 1670 
And fat regorged of bulls and goats, 
C haunting their idol, and preferring 
Before our Living Dread, who dwells 
In Silo, his bright sanctuary, 
Among them he a spirit of phrenzy sent, 
Who hurt their minds, 
And urged them on with mad desire 
To call in haste for their destroyer. 
They, only set on sport and play, 
Unweetingly importuned 1680 

Their own destruction to come speedy upon 

them. 
So fond are mortal men, 
Fallen into wrath divine, 
As their own ruin on themselves to invite, 
Insensate left, or to sense reprobate, 
And with blindness internal struck. 

Semichor. But he, though blind of sight, 
Despised, and thought extinguished quite, 
With inward eyes illuminated, 
His fiery virtue roused ^90 

From under ashes into sudden flame, 
And as an evening Dragon came, 
Assailant on the perched roosts 
And nests in order ranged 
Of tame villatic fowl, but as an Eagle 
His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads. 



3i6 



SAMSON AGONISTES 



So Virtue, given for lost, 
Depressed and overthrown, as seemed, 
Like that self-begotten bird 
In the Arabian woods embost, 1700 

That no second knows nor third, 
And lay erewhile a holocaust, 
From out her ashy womb now teemed, 
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most 
When most unactive deemed; 
And, though her body die, her fame sur- 
vives, 
A secular bird, ages of lives. 

Man. Come, come; no time for lamenta- 
tion now, 
Nor much more cause. Samson hath quit 

himself 
Like Samson, and heroicly hath finished 
A life heroic, on his enemies 17 u 

Fully revenged — hath left them years of 

mourning, 
And lamentation to the sons of Caphtor 
Through all Philistian bounds; to Israel 
Honour hath left and freedom, let but 

them 
Find courage to lay hold on this occasion; 
To himself and father's house eternal fame; 
And, which is best and happiest yet, all this 
With God not parted from him, as was 

feared, 
But favouring and assisting to the end. 1720 
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
Or knock the breast; no weakness, no con- 
tempt, 
Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and 

fair, 
And what may quiet us in a death so noble. 
Let us go find the body where it lies 
Soaked in his enemies' blood, and from the 
stream 



With lavers pure, and cleansing herbs, 

wash off 
The clotted gore. I, with what speed the 

while 
(Gaza is not in plight to say us nay), 
Will send for all my kindred, all my 
friends, i 73 o 

To fetch him hence, and solemnly attend, 
With silent obsequy and funeral train, 
Home to his father's house. There will I 

build him 
A monument, and plant it round with shade 
Of laurel ever green and branching palm, 
With all his trophies hung, and acts en- 
rolled 
In copious legend, or sweet lyric song. 
Thither shall all the valiant youth resort, 
And from his memory inflame their breasts 
To matchless valour and adventures high ; 
The virgins also shall, on feastful days, 174 1 
Visit his tomb with flowers, only bewail- 
ing 
His lot unfortunate in nuptial choice, 
From whence captivity and loss of eyes. 

Chor. All is best, though we oft doubt 
What the unsearchable dispose 
Of Highest Wisdom brings about, 
And ever best found in the close. 
Oft He seems to hide his face, 
But unexpectedly returns, 1750 

And to his faithful Champion hath in place 
Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza 

mourns, 
And all that band them to resist 
His uncontrollable intent. 
His servants He, with new acquist 
"OFtrue experience from this great event, 
With peace and consolation hath dismissed, 
And calm of mind, all passion spent. 



PART SECOND 
LATIN POEMS 



Title-page in Edition of 1645: — "Joannis Miltoni Londinensis Poemata. 
Quorum pleraque intra annum setatis vigesimum conscripsit. Nunc primum 
edita. Londini, Typis R. R., Prostant ad Insignia Principis, in Coemeterio D 
Pauli, apud Humphredum Moseley. 1645." 



LATIN POEMS 



In the first half of the seventeenth cen- 
tury Latin was not only the accepted lan- 
guage for learned writing, and for writing 
addressed to a European audience, but in 
many cases it was spontaneously chosen for 
other and more intimate purposes. Europe, 
and especially England, was not yet far 
enough away from the revival of learning 
to have begun to throw off the spell of the 
classics. In the universities, of course, the 
prejudice in favor of Latin was overwhelm- 
ing, and he was an indifferent scholar who 
came away from his Alma Mater without 
having put that language almost as much 
at his command as the vernacular. In 
reading Milton's Latin poetry, therefore, 
we must bear in mind that it was not task- 
verse, nor mere language exercise, but that 
almost as a matter of course he put into 
it, rather than into his English verse, the 
first enthusiasm of his mind. Indeed, if it 
were not for the Nativity Ode, we should be 
justified in saying that before the Horton 
period began, he possessed a much greater 
facility and poetical power in Latin than 
in English. As it is, we find in his Latin 
poetry that record of his poetic boyhood 
which we look for in vain among the 
meagre and (with one great exception) 
disappointing English verse of his early 
period. 

The most obvious interest which attaches 
to the Latin poems is the definite autobio- 
graphic material which they contain. In 
the first elegy, for example, we learn of 
Milton's suspension from college, and of 
the manner in which he employed himself 
during his enforced vacation. In the sixth 
elegy occurs the first mention of the Na- 
tivity Ode, at the close of a noble statement 
of that poetic creed, making great art in- 



separable from great living, which he had 
already at the age of twenty-one fully de- 
veloped. Then, set in odd relief against 
this precocious solemnity, there follows in 
the seventh elegy an account of a thor- 
oughly boyish and naive love affair, a 
chance meeting in a London street with a 
girl whose eyes draw the soul out of his 
body, — one of those lightning flashes from 
the clear sky of youth which tell of the 
summer passion suspended there. In the 
verses To Manso, we get the first announce- 
ment of Milton's intention to write an epic 
poem on the legendary history of Britain, 
in a connection suggestive of the manner 
in which the heroic poems of Italy had 
stimulated and made definite his vague 
poetical ambitions. In the Epitaphlum Da- 
monis we learn of his decision, arrived at 
only after much debate and weighing of 
the odds, to write in English rather than 
in Latin. 

More interesting even than these scraps 
of definite information, is the light thrown 
by the Latin poems upon Milton's relations 
with the people about him. The second 
elegy shows us the deep feeling of tender- 
ness which he continued to cherish for his 
tutor, Thomas Young, after their separa- 
tion ; and furnishes a picture of that worthy 
Smectymnuan which seems to justify the 
feeling. The verses addressed to his father 
show us both how carefully and generously 
the elder Milton provided for his son's 
growth in all the graces and virtues of the 
intellect, and also how uneasy the old gentle- 
man became over the refusal of that son to 
employ his education toward any more defi- 
nite end than that of becoming a poet skilled 
to sing of time and eternity. Behind the 
son's protest against his elder's practicality 



3*9 



3 2 ° 



LATIN POEMS 



there is evident a filial relation of unusual 
depth and sweetness. Again, in the verses 
to Salzillo and to Manso, and in the Epitaph- 
ium Damonis, we get many entertaining 
glimpses of the friendships which Milton 
made in Italy. Above all, we get from the 
Latin poems, as a whole, an understanding 
of the one great friendship of Milton's life, 
that with Charles Diodati. The lament 
upon Diodati's untimely death not only is 
an exquisite work of art, beautiful with the 
delicate, pure beauty of the Sicilian lyrists, 
but it also has a touching humanity very 
rare in Milton's work. 

This latter quality suggests another 
interest possessed by the Latin poems, 
namely, the indirect information they con- 
vey concerning Milton's character during 
its plastic period. His enthusiasm for the 
theatre, his eager holiday interest in the 
crowds thronging the London parks and 
suburban pleasure - places, the rapturous 
praise of English girls to which he is 
moved by the sight of groups of them 
promenading in holiday attire, his instan- 
taneous surrender before one pair of chal- 
lenging eyes, — all this shows a side of 
Milton unfamiliar to those who know him 
only through his English verse. The sixth 
elegy, sent to Diodati at some country- 
house where Christmas was being cele- 
brated in good old English fashion, has a 
delightful geniality, not spoiled but only 
thrown into relief by the mood of strenu- 
ousness with which the poem closes. The 
unrestrained fervor of the lines On the 
Approach of Spring surprises us until we 
learn from a dozen places in the poems of 
this period that the lax, voluptuous Ovid 
was Milton's darling poet among the Latins. 
Along with these hints of character, we get 
others of a more familiar kind, — the Puri- 
tan boy's indignation over the fact that a 
godly minister like Young should be com- 
pelled to seek sustenance in a foreign coun- 
try; the Puritan youth's dogma of asceti- 
cism as a preparation for the life of poetry ; 
the young bachelor's self-confidence, tinge- 



ing the real humility of his feeling toward 
his father and the venerable Manso with a 
hint of superb intellectual arrogance be- 
hind; and, in the Ode to Rouse, the adult 
poet's weariness with the wranglings and 
hoarse disputes of his generation. Milton 
is Milton still; a knowledge of his Latin 
poetry can hardly disturb our fundamental 
conceptions of him; but it is safe to say 
that no one who is unfamiliar with that 
poetry can form a true idea of his youth. 
With only the English poems and letters 
to judge from, we are left with an uncom- 
fortable sense that young Milton was a 
young prig; the real dignity of his moral 
attitude escapes us, because we do not see 
the opposing forces which he had to over- 
come. 

As to the artistic qualities of this poetry, 
it would not be profitable to speak here at 
length. In the main they are qualities of 
delicacy and felicitousness rather than of 
strength. They bear a relation to Milton's 
later English poetry roughly analogous to 
that which Tennyson's early lyrical experi- 
ments bear to his adult work. In them 
Milton learned his trade of poet, at least 
on its technical and imitative side. The 
habit of assimilation, the power to freight 
his lines with the accumulated riches of 
past thought, we see here in the making, 
and we see also how the habit of conveying 
commonplace thought in a sonorous and 
magniloquent medium fostered that large 
Miltonic diction, which was so noble in 
Milton's own hands, and so intolerably hol- 
low in the hands of his eighteenth-century 
imitators. It would be wrong, however, to 
think of these poems as consciously disci- 
plinary. When they were written, the 
chances seemed even that Milton's main 
work as poet would be in Latin rather 
than in English; they represent sincere 
creative effort, and offer many rare intrin- 
sic beauties in spite of their immaturity. 

To see most clearly what Milton could 
have accomplished in neo-Latin poetry, we 
must turn to the few pieces written after his 



DE AUCTORE TESTIMONIA 



321 



apprenticeship had passed, and especially 
to the Epitaphium Damonis. No more con- 
vincing proof is needed of the artistic 
sincerity of Milton's Latin poetry than the 
fact that he chose the Latin medium for 
this threnody. For sweet directness of 
feeling, undiverted by the conventional 
mould into which it is thrown, it challenges 
comparison with Theocritus himself, of 
whose lament for Bion it is formally an 
imitation. To place the Epitaphium Da- 
monis beside Lycidas is to show the differ- 
ence between pastoral poetry in its early 
purity and pastoral poetry after it had 
gathered up the confused riches of the Re- 
naissance. Lycidas is more splendid; the 
poet's imagination circles out from his 
theme with a mightier wing, and lays 
under contribution a wider area of sugges- 
tion: but the Epitaphium Damonis has a 
unity, a plaintive clinging to its grief, a 
touching absorption in the familiar aspects 
of the life it mourns, which compensate 



for its narrower range. This effect of 
unity is subtly heightened by the recur- 
rence of the plaint : — 

" Ite domura, impasti; domino jam non vacat, 
agni," 

interrupting the pastoral pictures as they 
drift by in lovely succession. The epi- 
sodic passages descriptive of Milton's ex- 
periences at Florence, of the Manso cups, 
and of the incepted epic upon King Arthur, 
might seem to be exceptions to the unity 
of design. Such episodes, however, were 
traditional in poetry of the kind; and they 
serve, by the touch of garrulous egotism 
that is in them, to heighten the effect of 
naivete' proper to the speaker. The con- 
clusion is similar to that of Lycidas, but 
touched with a wilder phantasy. Perhaps 
no passage in Milton is so original, so dar- 
ing, as this, where the joys of the redeemed 
soul in Paradise are represented under the 
symbolism of the Dionysiac orgies. 



LATIN POEMS 



[DE AUCTORE TESTIMONIA] 

Hcec qtice sequuntur de Authore testimonia, 
tametsi ipse intelligebat non tarn de se quam 
supra se esse dicta, eo quod prcecla7-o ingenio 
viri, nee non amici, ita fere solent laudare ut 
omnia suis potius virtutibus quam veritati cou- 
gruentia nimis cupide ajjfitigant, noluit tamen 
horum egregiam in se voluntatem non esse 
notam, cum alii prcesertim ut id faceret mag- 
nopere suaderent. Dum eni?n nimice latcdis 
invidiam totis ab se viribus amolitur, sibique 
quod plus icquo est non attributum esse mavult, 
judicium interim hominum cordatorum atque 
illustrium quin summo sibi honor i ducat negare 
non potest. 

JOANNES BAPTISTA MANSUS, MARCHIO 
VILLENSIS NEAPOLITANUS, AD JOANNEM 
MILTONIUM ANGLUM 

Ut mens, forma, decor, facies, mos, si pie- 
tas sic, 
Non Anglus, verum hercle Angelus ipse, 
fores. 



AD JOANNEM MILTONEM ANGLUM, TRI- 
PLICI POESEOS LAUREA CORONANDUM, 
GRiECA" NIMIRUM, LATINA, ATQUE HE- 
TRUSCA\ EPIGRAMMA JOANNIS SALSILLI 
ROMANI 

Cede, Meles; cedat depressa Mincius urna; 

Sebetus Tassum desinat usque loqui; 
At Thamesis victor cunctis ferat altior un- 
das; 

Nam per te, Milto, par tribus unus erit. 

AD JOANNEM MILTONUM 

Graecia Mseonidem, jactet sibi Roma Maro- 
nem; 
Anglia Miltonum jactat utrique parem. 
Selvaggi. 

al signor gio. miltoni, nobile inglese 

Ode 

Ergimi all' Etra o Clio, 

Perche di stelle intreccierb corona! 

Non piu del biondo Dio 



322 



LATIN POEMS 



La fronde eterna in Pindo, e in Elicona: 
Diensi a merto maggior maggiori i fregi, 
A celeste virtu celesti pregi. 

Non pu6 del Tempo edace 
Rimaner preda eterno alto valore ; 
Non pu6 1' obblio rapace 
Furar dalle memorie eecelso onore. 
Sull' arco di mia cetra un dardo forte 
Virtu m' adatti, e ferir6 la Morte. 

Dell' Ocean profondo 

Cinta dagli am pi gorghi Anglia risiede 

Separata dal mondo, 

Per6 che il suo valor 1' umano eccede : 

Questa feconda sa produrre Eroi, 

Ch' hanno a ragion del sovruman tra noi. 

Alia virtu sbandita 

Danno nei petti lor fido ricetto, 

Quella gli e sol gradita, 

Perche in lei san trovar gioia e diletto; 

Ridillo tu, Giovanni, e mostra in tanto, 

Con tua vera virtu, vero il mio Canto. 

Lungi dal patrio lido 

Spinse Zeusi 1' industre ardente brama; 

Ch' udio d' Elena il grido 

Con aurea tromba rimbombar la fama, 

E per poterla effigiare al paro 

Dalle piu belle Idee trasse il piu raro. 

Cosi 1' ape ingegnosa 

Trae con industria il suo liquor pregiato 

Dal giglio e dalla rosa, 

E quanti vaghi fiori ornano il prato; 

Formano un dolce suon diverse corde, 

Fan varie voci melodia concorde. 

Di bella gloria amante 

Milton, dal Ciel natio, per varie parti 

Le peregrine piante 

Volgesti a ricercar scienze ed arti ; 

Dell Gallo regnator vedesti i Regni, 

E delF Italia ancor gl' Eroi piu degni. 

Fabro quasi divino, 

Sol virtu rintracciando, il tuo pensiero 

Vide in ogni confino 

Chi di nobil valor calca il sentiero; 

L' ottimo dal miglior dopo scegliea 

Per fabbricar d' ogni virtu 1' Idea. 

Quanti nacquero in Flora, 

O in lei del parlar Tosco appreser 1' arte, 



La cui memoria onora 5 i 

II mondo fatta eterna in dotte carte, 
Volesti ricercar per tuo tesoro, 
E parlasti con lor nell' opre loro. 

Nell' altera Babelle 

Per te il parlar confuse Giove in vano, 

Che per varie favelle 

Di se stessa trofeo cadde sul piano: 

Ch' ode, oltr' all' Anglia, il suo piu degno 

idioma 
Spagna, Francia, Toscana, e Grecia, e 

Roma. 6o 

I piu profondi arcani 

Ch' occulta la Natura, e in cielo e in terra, 
Ch' a Ingegni sovrumani 
Troppo avara talor gli chiude, e serra, 
Chiaramente conosci, e giungi al fine 
Delia moral virtude al gran confine. 

Non batta il Tempo 1' ale, 

Fermisi immoto, e in un ferminsi gli anni, 

Che di virtu immortale 

Scorron di troppo ingiuriosi ai danni; 70 

Che s' opre degne di poema e storia 

Furon gia, 1' hai presenti alia memoria. 

Dammi tua dolce Cetra, 

Se vuoi ch' io dica del tuo dolce canto, 

Ch' inalzandoti all' Etra 

Di farti uomo celeste ottiene il vanto; 

II Tamigi il dirk, che gli e concesso 
Per te, suo cigno, pareggiar Permesso. 

Io, che in riva dell' Arno 

Tento spiegar tuo merto alto e preclaro, 80 

So che fatico indarno, 

E ad ammirar, non a lodarlo imparo ; 

Freno dunque la lingua, e ascolto il core, 

Che ti prende a lodar con lo stupore. 

Del Sig. Antonio Francini, 
Gentiluomo Fiorentino. 



JOANNI MILTONI, LONDINENSI, 

Juveni patria, virtutibus, eximio: 
Viro qui multa peregrinatione, studio 
cuncta, orbis terrarum loca perspexit, ut, 
novus Ulysses, omnia ubique ab omnibus 
apprehenderet: 

Polyglotto, in cujus ore lingupe jam de- 
perditse sic reviviscunt ut idiomata omnia 
sint in ejus laudibus infacunda; et jure ea 



ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS 



323 



percallet ut admirationes et plausus popu- 
lorum ab propria sapientia excitatos intel- 
ligat: 

Illi, cujus animi dotes corporisque sen- 
sus ad admirationem commovent, et per 
ipsam motum cuique auferunt; cujus opera 
ad plausus hortantur, sed venustate vocem 
laudatoribus adimunt: 

Cuiin Memoria totus orbis; in Intellectu 
sapientia; in Voluntate ardor gloria?; in 
Ore eloquentia; harmonicos caelestium 
sphaerarum sonitus Astronomia duce audi- 
enti; characteres mirabiliurn Naturae per 



quos Dei magnitudo describitur magistral 
Philosophic legenti; antiquitatum latebras, 
vetustatis excidia, eruditionis ambages, co- 
mite assidua Autorum lectione, ' exquirenti, 
restauranti, percurrenti ' 

(At cur nitor in arduum ?) : 
Illi in cujus virtutibus evulgandis ora 
Famse non sufficiant, nee hominum stupor 
in laudandis satis est, Reverential et Amo- 
ris ergo hoc ejus meritis debitum admira- 
tionis tributum offert 

Carolus Datus, Patricius Florentinus, 
Tanto homini servus, tantaj virtu tis amator. 



ELEGIARUM LIBER — ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS 

ELEGIA PRIMA 

Ad Carolum Diodatum 

ELEGY I 

To Charles Diodati 



This verse-letter marks the occasion of Mil- 
ton's rustication from college during his second 
academic year, 1625-26, owing to a dispute 
with his tutor, William Chappell (see introduc- 
tory biography). It is addressed to his bosom 
friend Charles Diodati, to whom also the sixth 
Latin Elegy and the Italian canzone are ad- 
dressed, and in whose memory the Epitaphium 
Damonis was written. Diodati was the son of 
an Italian father — a physician settled in Lon- 
don — and an English mother. Milton's ac- 
quaintance with him, begun at St. Paul's School, 
continued after Diodati went up to Oxford, two 
years before Milton went to Cambridge. When 
the present epistle was written, Diodati had 
taken his first degree, and was visiting in the 
neighborhood of Chester. 

The chief interest of the elegy, besides the 
light it throws on the incident of Milton's rus- 
tication and his feeling toward his college, lies 

Tandem, chare, tuae mihi pervenere ta- 
bellae, 

Pertulit et voces nuncia charta tuas; 
Pertulit occidua Devse Cestrensis ab ora 

Vergivium prono qua petit amne salum. 
Multum, crede, juvat terras aluisse remotas 

Pectus amans nostri, tamque fidele caput, 
Qu6dque mihi lepidum tellus longinqua 
sodalem 

Debet, at unde brevi reddere jussa velit. 



in the account which he gives of his pastimes 
during this period of enforced vacation. The 
enthusiastic account of his theatre-going is 
especially noteworthy, though ambiguity ex- 
ists throughout the passage as to whether ac- 
tual stage representations or merely the read- 
ing of drama is meant, an ambiguity which is 
increased by the fact that the illustrations seem 
drawn equally from Roman comedy and Greek 
tragedy, and from the contemporary drama of 
England. He also recounts his walks in the 
streets and parks of London, with a youthful 
zest and freshness doubly delightful in a char- 
acter like his. His praise of the girls whom 
he encounters, though couched in the conven- 
tional language of pseudo-classic poetry, is thor- 
oughly youthful and gay ; even here, however, 
there is a touch of strenuousness at the end, 
none the less earnest for being half -playfully 
uttered. 

At last, dear friend, your letter has 
reached me ; the missive paper bears me 
your words from the western shore of the 
Dee, by Chester, where that river goes 
down swiftly to the Irish Sea. Much joy 
it gives me to think that a far-off country 
has nourished for me so dear a head as 
yours, and a heart that loves me ; and that 
soon that distant region where you sojourn 
will yield back my sweet comrade to my 



324 



LATIN POEMS 



Me tenet urbs reflua quam Thamesis alluit 
unda, 
Meque nee invitum patria dulcis habet. 
Jam nee arundiferum mini cura revisere 
Camum, u 

Nee dudum vetiti me laris angit amor. 
Nuda nee arva placent, umbrasque negan- 
tia molles ; 
Quam male Phcebicolis convenit ille lo- 
cus ! 
Nee duri libet usque minas perferre Magis- 
tri, 
Cseteraque ingenio non subeunda meo. 
Si sit hoc exilium, patrios adiisse penates, 

Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi, 
Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemve re- 
cuso, 
Lsetus et exilii conditione fruor. 20 

O utinam vates nunquam graviora tulisset 

Ille Tomitano flebilis exul agro; 
Non tunc Ionio quicquam cessisset Homero, 

Neve foret victo laus tibi prima, Maro. 
Tempora nam licet hie placidis dare libera 
Musis, 
Et totum rapiunt me, mea vita, libri. 
Excipit hinc fessum sinuosi pompa theatri, 

Et vocat ad plausus garrula scena suos. 
Seu catus auditur senior, seu prodigus 
hseres, 
Seu procus, aut posita casside miles 
adest, 30 

Sive decennali fcecundus lite patronus 
Detonat inculto barbara verba foro; 
Sa3pe vafer gnato succurrit servus amanti, 

Et nasum rigidi fallit ubique patris ; 
Ssepe novos illic virgo mirata calores 

Quid sit amor nescit, dum quoque nescit 
amat: 
Sive cruentatum furiosa Tragoedia scep- 
trum 
Quassat, et effusis crinibus ora rotat; 
Et dolet, et specto, juvat et spectasse 
dolendo; 
Interdum et lacrymis dulcis amaror 
inest: 40 

Seu puer infelix indelibata reliquit 

Gaudia, et abrupto flendus amore cadit; 
Seu ferus e tenebris iterat Styga criminis 
ultor, 
Conscia funereo pectora torre movens; 
Seu mceret Pelopeia domus, seu nobilis Hi, 

Aut luit incestos aula Creontis avos. 
Sed neque sub tecto semper nee in urbe 
latemus, 
Irrita nee nobis tempora veris eunt. 



prayers. I am in that city which Thames 
washes with her tidal wave, and I am glad 
to be there ; I have no wish to go back to 
reedy Cam ; I feel no homesickness for that 
forbidden college room of mine. The bare 
fields there, niggard of pleasant shade, do 
not please me. How ill does that place 
suit with poets ! But here in London no 
stern master's threats can reach me, nor 
any of those other indignities at which my 
nature rebelled. If this is " exile," to live 
under my father's roof and be free to use 
my leisure pleasantly, I will not repudiate 
either the name or the lot they have put 
upon me, but will in all happiness enjoy 
my condition. Oh would that Ovid, sad 
exile in the fields of Thrace, had never suf- 
fered a worse lot ! Then he would have 
yielded not a whit even to Homer, nor 
would the first praise be thine, Virgil, for 
he would have vanquished thee. 

I have time free now to give to the tran- 
quil Muses. They claim me wholly ; my 
books are my life. When I am weary, the 
pomp of the changing theatre awaits me, 
the garrulous stage and the clapping hands. 
Sometimes the cautious old man holds the 
scene, or the prodigal heir, or the wooer, or 
the soldier with his helmet laid aside ; or 
the lawyer, pregnant with a ten-years' suit, 
thunders barbarous words before an igno- 
rant court. The wily servant helps his 
master's son in his love-scrapes, and tricks 
the stern father under his very nose ; and 
the girl, wondering at the new ardors that 
fill her, loves without knowing what love 
is. Then awful Tragedy shakes her bloody 
sceptre, and rolls her eyes under her dis- 
heveled hair. I suffer and gaze, and find 
it good to suffer and gaze. Bitterness 
mingles with sweet tears as I see some 
hapless boy, torn from his love, leave all 
his joys untasted and fall lamentable ; or 
when the fierce avenger of crime recrosses 
Styx out of the shades, and terrifies the 
breasts of the guilty with his funeral torch ; 
or when the house of Pelops mourns, or the 
house of Ilus ; or when the hall of Creon 
laments the incest of its lords. 

But I do not stay indoors always, nor 
even in town ; I do not let the spring slip 



ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS 



3 2 5 



Nos quoque lucus habet vicina consitus 
ulmo, 
Atque suburbani nobilis umbra loci. 50 
Saepius hie, blandas spirantia sidera flam- 
mas, 
Virgineos videas praeteriisse choros. 
Ah quoties dignae stupui miracula formae 
Quae possit senium vel reparare Jovis ! 
Ah quoties vidi superantia lumina gemmas, 
Atque faces quotquot volvit uterque 
polus ; 
Collaque bis vivi Pelopis quae brachia vin- 
cant, 
Quaeque fluit puro nectare tincta via, 
Et decus eximium frontis, tremulosque 
capillos, 
Aurea quae fallax retia tendit Amor; 60 
Pellacesque genas, ad quas hyacinthina 
sordet 
Purpura, et ipse tui floris, Adoni, rubor ! 
Cedite laudatae toties Heroides olim, 

Et quaecunque vagum cepit arnica Jo- 
vem; 
Cedite Achaemeniae turrita fronte puellae, 
Et quot Susa colunt, Memnoniamque 
Ninon; 
Vos etiam Danaae fasces submittite Nym- 
phae, 
Et vos Iliacae, Romuleaeque nurus; 
Nee Pompeianas Tarpeia Musa columnas 

Jactet, et Ausoniis plena theatra stolis. 7c 
Gloria virginibus debetur prima Britannis; 

Extera sat tibi sit fcemina posse sequi. 
Tuque urbs Dardaniis, Londinum, structa 
colonis, 
Turrigerum late conspicienda caput, 
Tu nimium felix intra tua mcenia claudis 
Quicquid formosi pendulus orbis habet. 
Non tibi tot caelo scintillant astra sereno, 
Endymioneae turba ministra deae, 
Quot tibi conspicuae formaque auroque 

puellae 
Per medias radiant turba videnda vias. 80 
Creditur hue geminis venisse invecta co- 
lumbis 
Alma pharetrigero milite cincta Venus, 
Huic Cnidon, et riguas Simoentis flumine 
valles, 
Huic Paphon, et roseam posthabitura 
Cypron. 
Ast ego, dum pueri sinit indulgentia caeci, 

Mcenia quam subitb linquere faustaparo; 
Et vitare procul malefidae infamia Circes 
Atria, divini Molyos usus ope. 



by unused. I visit the groves planted thick 
with elm, the suburban parks noble with 
shade. There often one may see the virgin 
bands go past, stars breathing bland fire. 
Ah, how many times have I stood stupefied 
before the miracle of some gracious form, 
such as might give old Jove his youth 
again ! Ah, how many times have I seen 
eyes brighter than gems, brighter than all 
the fires that roll about either pole, necks 
whiter than the ivory shoulder of Pelops, 
and lips tinct and dewy with pure nectar ! 
And exquisite grace of brow, and floating 
locks, — golden nets which Love casts de- 
ceivingly, — inviting cheeks, to which the 
purple of the hyacinth, yea, even the blush 
of thy flower, Adonis, is dull ! Yield, ye 
Heroides so praised of yore, and all ye 
loves that snared gadding Jove ! Yield, 
ye Persian damsels with your turreted 
brows ; and all ye who dwell in Susa, in 
Memnonian Nineveh ! Even ye, daughters 
of Danaiis, lower the fasces ; and ye Tro- 
jan ones, and the betrothed of Romulus ! 
Let not the poet who lived by the Tarpeian 
rock [Ovid] boast the dames of Pompey's 
porch, nor the theatre full of Roman stoles. 
To the virgins of Britain first glory is due ; 
suffice it, foreign woman, that thy place is 
second ! And thou city of London, built 
by Dardanian colonists, thy towered head 
conspicuous far and wide, thou, too happy, 
enclosest with thy walls whatever beauty 
the pendulous Earth owns. Not so many 
stars twinkle over thee in the clear night 
sky, ministrant troops of Endymion's god- 
dess, as through thy highways throng radi- 
ant troops of girls, drawing all eyes with 
the golden grace of their forms. Men say 
that hither blessed Venus came, with her 
quivered nymph attendant, drawn by twin 
doves, willing to love London more than 
Cnidos, or the vales watered by the stream 
of Simois, or Paphos, or rosy Cyprus. 

But for my part, while the blind boy 
grants me immunity, I hasten to leave 
these fortunate walls as quickly as I may ; 
and avoid far off the evil halls of Circe 
the deceiver, using at my need moly, that 



326 



LATIN POEMS 



Stat quoque juncosas Cami renieare pa- 

ludes, 

Atque iterum raucae murmur adire 

Scholse. go 

Interea fidi parvum cape munus amici, 

Paucaque in alternos verba coacta modos. 



heavenly plant. It has been arranged for 
me to go back to the bulrush swamps of 
Cam, and to the raucous murmur of the 
school. Meanwhile take this poor gift of a 
faithful friend, these few words constrained 
into the measure of elegy. 



ELEGIA SECUNDA 

Anno cetatis 17 

IN OBITUM PRiECONIS Academici Cantabrigiensis 

ELEGY II 
On the Death of the University Beadle 



The person to whose memory this elegy is 
addressed, Richard Ridding-, M. A., of St. 
John's College, Cambridge, died in the au- 
tumn of 1626, near the beginning of Milton's 
third year at the University. Three persons 
at Cambridge bear the title of Esquire Bedel 
(Latin praeco, herald or crier). Their duties 
are, to bear the mace before the Chancellor on 
solemn occasions, and to give summons. The 
office is one of considerable dignity, and has a 

Te, qui conspicuus baculo fulgente solebas 

Palladium toties ore ciere gregem, 
Ultima praeconuin praeconem te quoque saeva 

Mors rapit, officio nee favet ipsa suo. 
Candidiora licet f uerint tibi tempora plumis 

Sub quibus accipimus delituisse Jovem, 
O dignus tamen Haemonio juvenescere 
succo, 

Dignus in iEsonios vivere posse dies, 
Dignus quern Stygiis medica revocaret ab 
undis 

Arte Coronides, saepe rogante dea. 10 

Tu si jussus eras acies accire togatas, 

Et celer a Phcebo nuntius ire tuo, 
Talis in Iliaca stabat Cyllenius aula 

Alipes, aetherea missus ab arce Patris; 
Talis et Eurybates ante ora furentis Achil- 
lei 

Rettulit Atridae jussa severa ducis. 
Magna sepulchrorum regina, satelles 
Averni, 

Saeva nimis Musis, Palladi saeva nimis, 



life tenure. The opening lines of the elegy 
have a suspicion of humor in them, but it is 
safe to say that Milton's tribute was meant in 
all seriousness. At any rate, the passing away 
of a picturesque figure from the University 
life gave the young Latinist too good an op- 
portunity for versifying to be neglected. The 
date-heading, anno cetatis 17, is here and else- 
where misleading ; Milton was, in the autumn 
of 1626, near the end of his eighteenth year. 

As beadle, you were wont, standing con- 
spicuous with your shining staff, to assem- 
ble the gowned flock: but now, beadle, 
Death has summoned you; his fierceness 
does not favor even his own office. 'Tis 
true, the locks of your temples were whiter 
than the swan-plumes under which Jove is 
storied to have hid, but O, you should have 
grown young again like iEson, with the 
simples drawn by Medea from the flowers 
of Haemonvale ! iEsculapius, son of Coronis, 
heeding the prayers of some importunate 
goddess, should have called you back with 
his healing art from the Stygian waves. 
Whenever you were ordered to go as a swift 
herald from your Apollo [the vice-chancel- 
lor of the university] and bring together 
the togaed hosts, you stood like wing-foot 
Hermes in the Trojan halls, sent from the 
ethereal domes of his Father; or like the 
herald Eurybates, when before the stormy 
face of Achilles he delivered the stern 
demands of Agamemnon. O thou great 
queen of sepulchres, handmaid of Avernus, 
too harsh to the Muses and the arts, why 



ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS 



327 



Quin illos rapias qui pondus inutile terrae ? 
Turba quidein est telis ista petenda 
tuis. 20 

Vestibus hunc igitur pullis, Academia, 
luge, 
Et inadeant lacrymis nigra feretra tuis. 
Fundat et ipsa modos querebunda Elegeia 
tristes, 
Personet et totis naenia mcesta scholis. 



shouldst thou not seize instead some hu- 
man clod, some useless weight of earth ? 
Against such rabble thy arrows might better 
be aimed. O Academe, grieve in mourn- 
ing vestment for this good man, and bedew 
his dark bier with thy tears. Let com- 
plaining Elegy pour out her sad strains, 
and let a mournful dirge ring through all 
the schools. 



ELEGIA TERTIA 

Anno cetatis 17 

IN OBITUM PRiESULIS WlNTONIENSIS 

ELEGY III 



On the Death of Dr. Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester 



The subject of this elegy, Dr. Launcelot 
Andrewes, died in September, 1626, at the 
close of the second long vacation of Milton's 
academic course. He was a fit subject for 
eulogy at the hands of young Cantabrigians, 
because he not only was a Cambridge man, 

Mcestus eram, et tacitus, nullo comitante, 
sedebam, 
Hsrebantque animo tristia plura meo: 
Protinus en subiit f unestse cladis imago 
Fecit in Angliaco quam Libitina solo; 
Dum procerum ingressa est splendentes 
marmore turres 
Dira sepulchrali Mors metuenda face, 
Pulsavitque auro gravidos et jaspide muros, 
Nee metuit satrapum sternere falce 
greges. 
Tunc memini clarique ducis, fratrisque 
verendi, 
Intempestivis ossa cremata rogis; IO 

Et memini Heroum quos vidit ad sethera 
raptos, 
Flevit et amissos Belgia tota duces. 
At te prsecipue luxi, dignissime Prsesul, 
Wintoniseque olim gloria magna tuse; 
Delicui fletu, et tristi sic ore querebar: 

" Mors fera, Tartareo diva secunda Jovi, 

Nonne satis quod sylva tuas persentiat iras, 

Et quod in herbosos jus tibi detur agros, 



but had at one time been Master of Pembroke 
Hall. The tone of the elegy affords a curious 
contrast to Milton's later utterances, in his 
anti-episcopal pamphlets, concerning this same 
bishop. 



Sad and silent I sat, comradeless; and 
many griefs clung about my soul. Then 
suddenly, behold, there arose before me an 
image of the deadly plague which Proser- 
pina spread on English soil, when dire 
Death, fearful with his sepulchral torch, 
entered the glorious marble towers of the 
great, shook the walls heavy with jasper 
and gold, and feared not to lay low with 
his scythe the host of princes. Then I 
thought on that illustrious duke [Duke 
Christian of Brunswick, a victim of the 
War of the Palatinate] and his worshipped 
brother, whose bones were consumed on an 
untimely pyre; and I thought on those 
heroes whom all Belgia saw snatched away 
to the skies, — saw, and wept her lost lead- 
ers. But for you chiefly I grieved, good 
Bishop, once the great glory of Winches- 
ter. I melted in tears, and with sad lip 
thus complained: "Cruel Death, goddess 
second to Tartarean Jove, is it then not 
enough that the woods should feel thy 
wrath, and that power should be given 
thee over the green things of the fields ? 



328 



LATIN POEMS 



Quodque afflata tuo marcescant lilia tabo, 

Et crocus, et pulchrae Cypridi sacra rosa ? 

Nee sinis ut semper fluvio contermina quer- 

cus 21 

Miretur lapsus praetereuntis aquae; 

Et tibi succumbit liquido quse plurima caelo 

Evehitur pennis, quamlibet augur, avis, 
Et quae mille nigris errant animalia sylvis, 
Et quod alunt mutum Proteos antra pe- 
cus. 
Invida, tanta tibi cum sit concessa potestas, 
Quid juvat humana tingere caede manus? 
Nobileque in pectus certas acuisse sagittas, 
Semideamque animam sede fugasse 
sua ? " 30 

Talia dum lacrymans alto sub pectore 
volvo, 
Roscidus occiduis Hesperus exit aquis, 
Et Tartessiaco submerserat aequore currum 

Phoebus, ab Edo littore mensus iter. 
Nee mora; membra cavo posui refovenda 
cubili; 
Condiderant oculos noxque soporque 
meos, 
Cum niihi visus eram lato spatiarier agro; 
Heu ! nequit ingenium visa referre 
meum. 
Illic punicea radiabant omnia luce, 

Ut matutino cum juga sole rubent; 40 
Ac veluti cum pandit opes Thaumantia 
proles 
Vestitu nituit multicolore solum; 
Non dea tam variis ornavit floribus hortos 

Alcinoi Zephyro Chloris amata levi. 
Flumina vernantes lambunt argentea cam- 
pos; 
Ditior Hesperio flavet arena Tago; 
Serpit odoriferas per opes levis aura Fa- 
voni, 
Aura sub innumeris humida nata rosis: 
Talis in extremis terrae Gangetidis oris 

Luciferi regis fingitur esse domus. 50 

Ipse racemiferis dum densas vitibus um- 
bras 
Et pellucentes miror ubique locos, 
Ecce mihi subitb Praesul Wintonius astat ! 

Sidereum nitido fulsit in ore jubar; 
Vestis ad auratos defluxit Candida talos; 

Infula divinum cinxerat alba caput. 
Dumque senex tali incedit venerandus 
amictu, 
Intremuit laeto florea terra sono ; 
Agmina gemmatis plaudunt caelestia pen- 
nis; 
Pura triumphali personat aethra tuba. 60 



That, touched by thy pestilent breath, the 
lily withers, and the crocus, and the rose 
sacred to beautiful Cypris ? Thou dost 
not permit the oak to stand forever by the 
stream, looking at the slipping-by of the 
water. To thee succumb the birds, as 
many as are borne on wings through the 
liquid sky, — even the birds, though they 
give augury; and all the thousand animals 
that roam the dark forests ; and the dumb 
herd that the caves of Proteus shelter. 
Envious ! When so much power has been 
granted thee, what did it pleasure thee 
to steep thy hands in human slaughter, 
sharpen thy certain arrows to pierce a no- 
ble breast, and drive from its tenement a 
soul half-divine ? " 

While I was brooding thus with tears, 
ruddy Hesperus rose from the western 
waters; for Phcebus, having measured out 
his journey from the shores of dawn, had 
submerged his chariot in the seas beyond 
Spain. I laid my limbs upon my bed to 
be refreshed by sleep. Night and slum- 
ber had embalmed my eyes, when suddenly 
I seemed to be walking in a wide field. 
Alas, I have no gift to tell what I saw ! 
There all things shone with a purpureal 
light, as when the mountain tops are flushed 
with the morning sun; and the earth gleamed 
with a vestment of many colors, even 
as when Iris scatters her wealth abroad. 
Not with so various flowers did Chloris, 
goddess loved of light Zephyr, adorn the 
gardens of King Alcinoiis. Silver streams 
laved the green champaign ; the sand shone 
richer than Hesperian Tagus. Through the 
odorous leafage breathed the light breath 
of Favonus, rising humid from under bow- 
ers of roses. Such a place men fable the 
home of Lucifer to be, far on the shores 
beyond Ganges. As I stood wondering at 
the enticing nooks and the shades made 
dense with loaded vines, behold, suddenly 
before me stood Winchester's bishop ! His 
face shone with glory like the stars; down 
to his golden sandals his robe flowed all 
candid; a white fillet encircled his head. 
As the old man, thus venerably clad, walked 
on, the flowery earth trembled with joyful 
sound; hosts of angels clapped their jew- 
elled wings, and through the air rang out a 



ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS 



329 



Quisque novum amplexu comitem cantuque 
salutat, 
Hosque aliquis placido misit ab ore 
sonos: 
" Nate, veni, et patrii felix cape gaudia 
regni; 
Semper abhinc duro, nate, labore vaca." 
Dixit, et aligerse tetigerunt nablia turmse ; 
At mihi cum tenebris aurea pulsa quies ; 
Flebam turbatos Cephaleia pellice somnos. 
Talia contingaut somnia saepe mihi ! 



triumphal horn. Each angel saluted his 
new comrade with embrace and song; and 
from the placid lips of One came these 
words: "Come, son, enjoy the gladness of 
thy father's realm; rest henceforth from 
thy hard labors." As He spoke, the winged 
choirs touched their psalteries. But from 
me my golden rest fled with the darkness, 
and I was left weeping the dreams which 
had been snatched away. May the like 
come to me often again ! 



ELEGIA QUARTA 

Anno cetatis 18 

Ad Thomam Junium, Pr^ceptorem suum, apud Mercatores Anglicos 
Hamburgh agentes Pastoris munere fungentem 

ELEGY IV 

To his Tutor, Thomas Young, Chaplain to the English Merchants at 

Hamburg 



Thomas Young, a young Scotch divine who 
had come to England in the wake of King 
James, had been Milton's domestic tutor, and 
had probably continued in that capacity after 
the boy was sent to St. Paul's School. Two 
years before Milton left St. Paul's, Young ac- 
cepted a position abroad as minister of a Pro- 
testant church supported by the English mer- 
chants resident at Hamburg in Germany. The 
present verse-letter, written in 1627, some years 
after Young's departure, shows by its tone of 
tenderness and solicitude that, in spite of his 
dilatoriness in writing, Milton still cherished 
a sincere affection for his former tutor. He 
compares his love for Young to that of Alci- 
biades for Socrates, and plainly states his debt 
to him for initiation into the delights of classi- 
cal literature. Milton's references to the trou- 
bled state of Germany, and the danger to which 
Young is exposed, will be made clear by re- 
membering that in 1627 the Thirty Years' War 
had entered upon its second stage, with Tilly 
and Wallenstein at the head of the Imperialist 
forces, and Christian IV. of Denmark as cham- 
pion of the Protestant cause. When the pre- 

Curre per immensum subit6, mea littera, 
pontum ; 
I, pete Teutonicos laeve per aequor agros ; 
Segnes rumpe moras, et nil, precor, obstet 
eunti, 
Et festinantis nil remoretur iter. 



sent epistle was written, the Imperialist army 
was reported in England to be on the point of 
laying siege to Hamburg. This circumstance 
serves to inflame Milton's indignation over the 
callousness of England, who had allowed one 
of her most righteous sons to be driven abroad 
for sustenance. * 

The prophecy with which the epistle closes, 
that Young would soon see his native shores 
again, was fulfilled in the same or the follow- 
ing year. He received a living at Stowmarket, 
Suffolk, and held it uninterruptedly until the 
close of his life in 1655. When the Long Par- 
liament met to inaugurate a new state of things 
in the church, Young came forward with the 
famous pamphlet against Bishop Hall and his 
defence of Episcopacy. This pamphlet was 
signed Smectymnuus, a name made up from the 
initials of Young and the four other ministers 
who had collaborated in the production; it was 
the first of the remarkable series of Smeetym- 
nuan pamphlets to which Milton contributed. 
After Milton's break with the Presbyterians, 
and his embroilment in the divorce controversy, 
his intimacy with Young probably ceased. 

Run through the great sea, my letter; 
go, over the smooth waters seek the shores 
of Germany. Tarry not; let nothing, I 
pray, stand in the way of your going; let 
nothing impair your haste. I myself will 



33° 



LATIN POEMS 



Ipse ego Sicanio frsenantem carcere ventos 

iEolon, et virides sollicitabo Deos, 
Caeruleamque suis comitatam Dorida Nym- 
phis, 
Ut tibi dent placidam per sua regna viam. 
At tu, si poteris, celeres tibi sume jugales, 
Vecta quibus Colchis fugit ab ore viri; 10 
Aut queis Triptolemus Scythicas devenit in 
oras, 
Gratus Eleusina missus ab urbe puer. 
Atque, ubi Germanas flavere videbis are- 
nas, 
Ditis ad Hamburgse mcenia flecte gradum, 
Dicitur occiso qua3 ducere nomen ab Hama, 
Cimbrica quern fertur clava dedisse neci. 
Vivit ibi antique clarus pietatis honore 

Prasul, Christicolas pascere doctus oves; 
Ille quidem est animse plusquam pars altera 
nostrse ; 
Dimidio vitse vivere cogor ego. 20 

Hei mihi, quot pelagi, quot montes inter- 
jecti, 
Me faciunt alia parte carere mei ! 
Charior ille mihi quam tu, doctissime 
Graium, 
Cliniadi, pronepos qui Telamonis erat; 
Quamque Stagirites generoso magnus 
alumno, 
Quern peperit Lybico Chaonis alma Jovi. 
Qualis Amyntorides, qualis Philyreius He- 
ros 
Myrmidonum regi^alis et ille mihi. 
Primus ego Aonios illo prseeunte recessus 

Lustrabam, et bifidi sacra vireta jugi, 30 
Pieriosque hausi latices, Clioque favente 

Castalio sparsi laeta ter ora mero. 
Flammeus at signum ter viderat arietis 
iEthon 
Induxitque auro lanea terga novo, 
Bisque novo terrain sparsisti, Chlori, seni- 
lem 
Gramine, bisque tuas abstulit Auster 
opes; 
Necdum ejus licuit mihi lumina pascere 
vultu, 
Aut linguae dulces aure bibisse sonos. 
Vade igitur, cursuque Eurum praverte 
sonorum ; 
Quam sit opus monitis res docet, ipsa 
vides. 40 

Invenies dulci cum conjuge forte sedentem, 

Mulcentem gremio pignora chara suo; 
Forsitan aut veterum prselarga volumina/ 
Patrum 
Versantem, aut veri Biblia sacra Dei, 



pray to iEolus, who chains the winds in his 
Sicilian cave, and to all the green-haired 
gods, and to cerulean Doris with her nymphs, 
that they give you a quiet way through their 
realms. But do you, if possible, get for 
yourself that swift dragon-team, where- 
with Medea fled from the face of her hus- 
band; or that with which the boy Tripto- 
lemus came into Scythia, a welcome mes- 
senger from Eleusis. And when you shall 
see the German sands gleam, turn your 
course to the walls of wealthy Hamburg, 
which takes its name, they say, from Hama, 
slain by the club of the Danish giant. There 
a minister dwells, skilled to pasture the 
flocks of Christ. He is the other half of 
my soul, yea, more; without him I am 
forced to live a half-life. Ah me, how 
many seas, how many mountains, interpose 
to part me from my other self ! Dearer 
he is to me than wert thou, Socrates, wisest 
of Greeks, to Alcibiades, who had Telamon 
for ancestor; dearer than the great Stagy- 
rite to his generous pupil Alexander, whom 
Olympias of Chaonia bore to Lybian Jove. 
As to the king of the Myrmidons was the 
son of Amyntor, or Cheiron, son of nymph 
Philyra, such is this man to me. I fol- 
lowed his footsteps when I first wandered 
through the hollows of the Aonian mount, 
and through the sacred groves of the cloven 
hill; with him I first drank the waters of 
the Pierian spring, and under favor of Clio 
wet my happy lips thrice with wine of 
Castaly. But flame-clad iEthon, the sun- 
hero, has three times seen the sign of the 
ram, and clothed the wooly back with new 
gold; and twice, O Flora, thou hast sprin- 
kled the old earth with new verdure, and 
twice has Auster, the South-wind, stolen 
away thy wealth, since it was granted mine 
eyes to feast upon this man's face, or mine 
ears to drink in the sweet tones of his voice. 
Go, then, and outstrip in your flight the 
sonorous East-wind. Whatever monitions 
you need, your eyes and occasion will teach 
you. Perchance you will come upon him 
as he sits with his sweet wife, fondling in 
his breast the dear pledges of their love; 
or perchance as he turns the tomes of the 
ancient Fathers, or the sacred books of 



ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS 



33 l 



Caelestive animas saturantem rore tenellas, 

Grande salutiferse religionis opus. 
Utque solet, multam sit dicere cura salu- 
tem, 

Dicere quam decuit, si modo adesset, 
herum. 
Haec quoque, paulum oculos in humum 
defixa modestos, 

Verba verecundo sis memor ore loqui: 50 
" Ha3c tibi, si teneris vacat inter prselia 
Musis, 

Mittit ab Angliaco littore fida manus. 
Accipe sinceram, quam vis sit sera, salutem ; 

Fiat et hoc ipso gratior ilia tibi. 
Sera quidem, sed vera fuit, quam casta re- 
cepit 

Icaris a lento Penelopeia viro. 
Ast ego quid volui manifestum tollere cri- 
men. 

Ipse quod ex omni parte levare nequit ? 
Arguitur tardus meritb, noxamque fatetur, 

Et pudet officium deseruisse suum. 60 
Tu mod6 da veniam fasso, veniamque ro- 
ganti; 

Crimina diminui quse patuere solent. 
Non ferus in pavidos rictus diducit hiantes, 

Vulnifico pronos nee rapit ungue leo. 
Saepe sarissiferi crudelia pectora Thracis 

Supplicis ad mcestas delicuere preces ; 
Extensseque manus avertunt fulminis ictus, 

Plaeat et iratos hostia parva Deos. 
Jamque diu scripsisse tibi fuit impetus illi, 

Neve moras ultra ducere passus Amor; 
Nam vaga Faraa refert, heu nuntia vera 
malorum ! 71 

In tibi finitimis bella tumere locis, 
Teque tuamque urbem truculento milite 
, cingi, 

Et jam Saxonicos arma parasse duces. 
Te circum late campos populatur Enyo, 

Et sata carne virum jam cruor arva 
rigat. 
Germanisque suum concessit Thracia Mar- 
tem; 

Illuc Odrysios Mars pater egit equos; 
Perpetuoque comans jam deflorescit oliva; 

Fugit et serisonam Diva perosa tubam, 80 
Fugit, io ! terris, et jam non ultima Virgo 

Creditur ad superas justavolasse domos. 
Te tamen interea belli circumsonat horror, 

Vivis et ignoto solus inobsque solo; 
Et, tibi quam patrii non exhibuere penates, 

Sede peregrina quseris egenus opem. 
Patria, dura parens, et saxis ssevior albis 

Spumea quse pulsat littoris unda tui, 



the true God; or as he sprinkles with hea- 
venly dew the souls not yet grown strong 
in faith, — great work of healing religion. 
Take care to give him fair greeting, as is 
wont, and to say what it would beseem 
your master to say if he were there. Re- 
member, fixing your modest eyes a while 
on the ground, to speak these words, shyly : 
" These verses — if there is time in the 
midst of battles for the gentle Muses — 
a faithful hand sends thee from the Eng- 
lish shore. Accept his greeting, late though 
it be. Aye, let it come all the welcomer for 
that. Late indeed, but true, was that greet- 
ing which chaste Penelope, daughter of 
Icarius, received from her tardy husband. 
But why should I seek to extenuate a fault 
which my master would be the last to deny ? 
Justly he is proved dilatory, and confesses 
the wrong ; he is ashamed to have put off 
the performance of such a duty. Grant 
grace to a sinner confessed, a sinner plead- 
ing. Wrongs revealed lose half their 
weight. The wild beast does not turn his 
yawning jaws against a trembling victim ; 
the lion will not wound with his claw those 
who lie prone. The cruel hearts of pike- 
bearing Thracians have often melted at the 
mournful cry of a suppliant; hands stretched 
out in appeal avert the lightning-stroke, 
and a little offering placates the anger of 

" For a long time now he has been moved 
to write thee, and now at last Love would 
not suffer more delay ; for vague Rumor — 
alas, true messenger of ill ! — says that thy 
neighborhood is big with wars, that thou 
and thy city are girt about with truculent 
soldiery, and that the Saxon chiefs are al- 
ready in arms. About thee far and wide 
Enyo the war goddess lays waste the fields, 
and blood stiffens the ground sown with the 
bodies of men. Mars deserts Thrace for 
Germany, and thither drives his Odrysian 
horses. The olive, always green, now with- 
ers; and Peace, who hates the trumpet's 
brazen clang, flees now from earth to hea- 
ven, whither, alas ! more virgins must follow 
her. Meanwhile about thee sounds the 
horror of war, where thou livest alone and 
poor in a strange land. Thou must needs 
seek in foreign parts the sustenance which 
thy fatherland denies thee. Fatherland, 
stern parent, harsher than the white rocks 
beaten by the foam of your shore, does it 



33 2 



LATIN POEMS 



Siccine te decet innocuos exponere foetus, 
Siccine in externam ferrea cogis hu- 
mum, 90 

Et sinis ut terris quaerant alimenta remotis 
Quos tibi prospiciens miserat ipse Deus, 
Et qui laeta ferunt de caelo nuntia, quique 
Quae via post cineres ducat ad astra 
docent ? 
Digna quidem Stygiis quae vivas clausa 
tenebris, 
iEternaque animae digna perire fame ! 
Haud aliter vates terrae Thesbitidis olim 

Pressit inassueto devia tesqua pede, 
Desertasque Arabum salebras, dum regis 
Achabi 99 

Effugit, atque tuas, Sidoni dira, manus. 
Talis et, horrisouo laceratus membra fla- 
gello, 
Paulus ab JEmathia pellitur urbe Cilix; 
Piscosaeque ipsum Gergessae civis Iesum 

Finibus ingratus jussit abire suis. 
At tu sume animos, nee spes cadat anxia 
curis, 
Nee tua concutiat decolor ossa metus. 
Sis etenim quamvis fulgentibus obsitus 
armis, 
Intententque tibi millia tela necem, 
At nullis vel inerme latus violabitur armis, 
Deque tuo cuspis nulla cruore bibet. no 
Namque eris ipse Dei radiante sub aegide 
tutus; 
Ille tibi custos, et pugil ille tibi ; 
Ille Sionaeae qui tot sub mcenibus arcis 

Assyrios fudit nocte silente viros; 
Inque f ugam vertit quos in Samaritidas oras 
Misit ab antiquis prisca Damascus agris; 
Terruit et densas pavido cum rege cohortes, 

Aere dum vacuo buccina clara sonat, 
Cornea pulvereum dum verberat ungula 
campum, 
Currus arenosam dum quatit actus hu- 
mum, 120 

Auditurque hinnitus equorum ad bella 
ruentum, 
Et strepitus ferri, murmuraque alta 
virum. 
Et tu (quod superest miseris) sperare me- 
mento, 
Et tua magnanimo pectore vince mala; 
Nee dubites quandoque frui melioribus 
annis, 
Atque iterum patrios posse videre lares." 



beseem you to expose your innocent off- 
spring, to drive them out — O heart of 
iron ! — into a strange land ? Those whom 
God in his providence sent to thee, bearing 
good tidings from Heaven, to teach the 
way to the stars after death, — will you 
force these to seek their food in distant 
regions ? If so, you are worthy to live 
forever shut in the darkness of death, and 
to perish with the eternal hunger of the 
soul ! Thus did Elijah the Tishbite of old 
tread with unaccustomed foot the devious 
desert ways and the rough wastes of Araby, 
when he fled from out the hands of King 
Ahab and of thee, dire Jezebel. Thus, his 
limbs torn by the scourge, was Cilician 
Paul driven from the city of Macedon ; and 
thus even Jesus himself was bidden by the 
citizen — ungrateful soul ! — to depart from 
the shores of fishy Gergessa. 

"But do thou take heart; let not care or 
worry steal thy hope, nor ashen fear invade 
thy bones. For though thou art girt about 
by gleaming arms, and though a thousand 
arrows threaten death, no weapon shall 
touch thy naked side, nor from thy blood 
shall any javelin drink. For thou shalt be 
safe under the radiant aegis of God. He 
shall be thy keeper and thy champion; 
He who, under the walls of Jerusalem, 
citadel of Zion, overwhelmed so many As- 
syrian men in the silence of night, and put 
to flight those whom hoary Damascus had 
sent from her ancient fields into Samaria. 
He terrified the dense cohorts and made the 
king to quake, when on the silence shrilled 
the clear trumpet, when horny hoofs smote 
the dust of the field and the chariot in 
its flight shook the sands, and there was 
heard the neighing of horses rushing to 
war, and the clash of iron, and the con- 
fused voices of men. Remember to hope, 
for hope is left even to the most wretched. 
Surmount thy misfortunes great-heartedly. 
And do not doubt that better times will 
come, and that once more thou mayst see 
thine old home." 



ELEGIES AND P:PIGRAMS 



333 



ELEGIA QUINTA 

An?io cztatis 20 
In Adventum Veris 



ELEGY V 
On the Coming of Spring 



Although this poem contains no definite au- 
tobiographical matter, it throws much light 
upon Milton's youthful character. The influ- 
ence of Ovid, everywhere latent and in many 
places explicitly acknowledged in the Latin 
poems, is here most evident. The quite pagan 
fervor and abandon of the entire poem is re- 
markable. The opening sentence of the second 
paragraph, it will be seen, was afterwards 

In se perpetuo Tempus revolubile gyro 
Jam revocat Zephyros, vere tepente, 
novos ; 
Induiturque brevem Tellus reparata juven- 
tam, 
Jamque soluta gelu dulce virescit humus. 
Fallor ? au et nobis redeunt in carmina 
vires, 
Ingeniumque mihi munere veris adest ? 
Munere veris adest, iterumque vigescit ab 
illo 
(Quis putet ?) atque aliquod jam sibi 
poscit opus. 
Castalis ante oculos, bifidumque cacumen 
oberrat, 
Et mihi Pirenen somnia nocte ferunt; 10 
Concitaque arcano fervent mihi pectora 
motu, 
Et furor, et sonitus me sacer intus agit. 
Delius ipse venit (video Peneide lauro 
Implicitos crines), Delius ipse venit. 
Jam mihi mensliquidi raptatur inardua cseli, 

Perque vagas nubes corpore liber eo; 
Perque umbras, perque antra feror, pene- 
tralia vatum; 
Et mihi fana patent interiora Deum; 
Intuiturque animus toto quid agatur 
Olympo, 19 

Nee fugiunt oculos Tartara caeca meos. 
Quid tarn grande sonat distento spiritus ore? 
Quid parit hsec rabies, quid sacer iste 
furor ? 
Ver mihi, quod dedit ingenium, cantabitur 
illo; 
Profuerint isto reddita dona modo. 



transferred almost bodily to the Sonnet on the 
Nightingale. It is interesting to compare the 
testimony of the opening lines, concerning the 
power of the spring to unloose the fountains of 
poetic inspiration, with Milton's statement to 
Phillips, many years after, that his vein " never 
flowed freely but from the autumnal equinox 
to the vernal." 



Time, revolving in perpetual gyre, now 
as the spring grows tepid calls back the 
Zephyrs. Earth puts on a brief new youth, 
and the ground loosened by thaws grows 
gently green. Do I mistake ? Doth not 
also my strength in song return ? At the 
spring's gift is not inspiration here ? At 
the spring's gift 't is here ! Again it gath- 
ers strength (who could believe it ?) and 
looks about for some noble task. Castaly 
sways before my eyes, and the cloven peak 
of Parnassus; and the dreams of night 
bring me to Pirene, the Corinthian spring. 
My breast is moved with mysterious fer- 
vors; madness and divine tumult inly 
wrack me. Delian Apollo himself comes 
(I see his locks bound with Daphne's laurel), 
Delian Apollo himself comes. Now my 
spirit is rapt into the skyey steeps, and 
freed from the flesh I walk through the 
wandering clouds; through the shades I go, 
and the caverns, inmost prophetic sanctua- 
ries; and the inner fanes of the gods lie 
open to me. My soul sees all that comes 
to pass in Olympus, and the darks of Hades 
escape not my vision. What lofty song 
does my soul intend, as it stands with lips 
apart ? what does this madness mean, this 
sacred fury ? The spring, the spring which 
gave me dower of genius, my genius will 
celebrate. Thus her gifts shall return to 
profit her. 



334 



LATIN POEMS 



Jam, Philomela, tuos, f oliis adoperta novel- 
lis, 
Instituis modulos, dum silet omne nemus: 
Urbe ego, tu sylva, simul incipiamus 
utrique. 
Et simul adventum veris uterque canat. 
Veris, io ! rediere vices; celebremus ho- 
nores 
Veris, et hoc subeat Musa perennis opus. 
Jam sol, iEthiopas fugiens Tithouiaque 
arva, 3 1 

Flectit ad Arctoas aurea lora plagas. 
Est breve noctis iter, brevis est mora noctis 
opacse, 
Horrida cum tenebris exulat ilia suis. 
Jamque Lycaonius plaustrum cseleste 
Bootes 
Non longa sequitur fessus ut ante via; 
Nunc etiam solitas circum Jovis atria toto 

Excubias agitant sidera rara polo. 
Nam dolus, et caedes, et vis cum nocte re- 
cessit, 
Neve Giganteum Dii timuere scelus. 40 
Forte aliquis scopuli recubans in vertice 
pastor, 
Roscida cum primo sole rubescit humus, 
" Hac," ait, " hac certe caruisti nocte pu- 
ella, 
Phcebe, tua, celeres quae retineret equos." 
Laeta suas repetit sylvas, pharetramque 
resumit 
Cynthia, luciferas ut videt alta rotas, 
Et, tenues ponens radios, gaudere videtur 

Officium fieri tarn breve fratris ope. 
" Desere," Phoebus ait, " thalamos, Aurora, 
seniles; 
Quid juvat effceto procubuisse toro ? 50 
Te manet iEolides viridi venator in herba ; 
Surge; tuos ignes altus Hymettus habet." 
Flava verecundo dea crimen in ore fatetur, 

Et matutinos ocius urget equos. 
Exuit invisam Tellus rediviva senectam, 

Et cupit amplexus, Phoabe, subire tuos. 
Et cupit, et digna est; quid enim formosius 
ilia, 
Pandit ut omniferos luxuriosa sinus, 
Atque Arabum spirat messes, et ab ore 
venusto 
Mitia cum Paphiis fundit amoma rosis ? 
Ecce, coronatur sacro frons ardua luco, 61 

Cingit ut Idaeam pinea turris Opim ; 
Et vario madidos intexit flore capillos, 

Floribus et visa est posse placere suis. 
Floribus effusos ut erat redimita capillos, 
Tsenario placuit diva Sicana Deo. 



Now, Philomel, in thy bower of new 
leaves, thou beginnest thy modulations, 
while all the woods are still. Thou in the 
forest and I in the town, let us begin to- 
gether, and together chant the coming on 
of spring. Sing ho ! the spring's vicissi- 
tudes are here ! let us celebrate her, let 
the Muse take up again the perennial task. 
For now the sun, fleeing from the Ethiop 
strand and the orient fields of Tithonus, 
turns to the north his golden reins. The 
journey of night grows brief; brief is the 
tarrying of murky night, when she exults 
in horrid shades. Now Bootes, wearied, 
follows through a shorter span the hea- 
venly Wain; now even the wonted watches 
of the stars about the courts of Jove grow 
rare. For, along with night, grief and crime 
and violence retreat; nor do the gods fear 
any longer the insults of their giant foes. 
Perchance some shepherd, lying on a sum- 
mit of rock, as he sees the dews reddening 
with dawn, says, " Surely this night, O 
Phoebus, thou hast lacked loving arms to 
hold thee back, thee and thy swift horses." 
Cynthia, when from her high station she 
beholds the sun's bright wheels, seems to 
rejoice that by her brother's aid her task 
has been shortened, and, laying by her 
faint halo, joyously goes back to her forest 
and her quiver. 

" O Aurora, Phoebus cries, leave the 
couch of old Tithonus ! what does that 
chilly bed avail thee ? Arise ! Procrus the 
hunter waits for thee on the grassy side of 
high Hymettus ! " With shy, averted face, 
the bright goddess confesses her love, and 
more swiftly urges on the horses of morn- 
ing. Earth, revivified, casts off her hated 
age, and longs for thy embraces, O Apollo ! 
longs for them, and deserves them. For 
what more beautiful than she, when she 
bares her rich breast, breathing of the har- 
vests of Araby, and when upon her lovely 
lips the balsams of the Orient mingle with 
the roses of Paphos ? Lo ! she encircles 
her high brow with sacred trees, as the 
tower of pines that crowns the goddess Ops 
on Ida; and flowers many-hued she weaves 
in her dew-drenched hair, in hope of pleas- 
ing her lover, as Proserpine, when she had 
bound her loose locks with flowers, pleased 



ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS 



335 



Aspice, Phoebe; tibi faciles hortantur 

amores, 

Mellitasque movent flamina verna preces; 

Cinnamea Zephyrus leve plaudit odorifer 

ala; 

Blanditiasque tibi ferre videntur aves. 70 

Nee sine dote tuos temeraria quserit amores 

Terra, nee optatos poscit egena toros; 
Alma salutiferum medicos tibi gramen in 
usus 
Prsebet, et hinc titulos adjuvat ipsa tuos. 
Qu6d si te pretium, si te f ulgentia tangunt 
Munera (muneribus ssepe coemptus 
amor), 
Ilia tibi ostentat quascunque sub aequore 
vasto, 
Et superinjectis montibus, abdit opes. 
Ah ! quoties, cum tu clivoso fessus Olympo 
In vespertinas prsecipitaris aquas, 80 

" Cur te,'* inquit, " cursu languentem, 
Phoebe, diurno 
Hesperiis recipit caerula mater aquis ? 
Quid tibi cum Tethy ? quid cum Tartes- 
side lympha ? 
Dia quid immundo perluis ora salo ? 
Frigora, Phoebe, mea melius captabis in 
umbra; 
Hue ades; ardentes imbue rore comas. 
Mollior egelida veniettibi somnus in herba; 

Hue ades, et gremio lumina pone meo. 
Quaque jaces circum mulcebit lene susur- 
rans, 
Aura per humentes corpora fusa rosas. 90 
Nee me (crede mihi) terrent Semeleia fata, 

Nee Phaetonteo f umidus axis equo ; 
Cum tu, Phoebe, tuo sapientius uteris igni, 
Hue ades, et gremio lumina pone meo." 
Sic Tellus lasciva suos suspirat amores; 

Matris in exemplum csetera turba ruunt. 
Nunc etenim toto currit vagus orbe Cu- 
pido, 
Languentesque fovet solis ab igne faces. 
Insonuere novis lethalia cornua nervis, 

Triste micant ferro tela corusca novo. 100 
Jamque vel invictam tentat superasse Di- 
anam, 
Quseque sedet sacro Vesta pudica foco. 
Ipsa senescentem reparat Venus annua for- 
mam, 
Atque iterum tepido creditur orta mari. 
Marmoreas juvenes clamant Hymencee per 
urbes ; 
Littus io Hymen et cava saxa sonant. 
Cultior ille venit, tunicaque decentior apta; 
Puniceum redolet vestis odora crocum. 



Taenarian Dis. Look hither, Apollo; will- 
ing love awaits thee; the spring winds 
are full of honeyed supplication. Odorous 
Zephyr lightly claps his cinnamon-scented 
wings, and the very birds seem to bear 
thee blandishments. Nor does Earth, over- 
bold, come empty-handed to seek the bri- 
dals of her longing. She brings thee medi- 
cinable herbs, whereby she may help thy 
fame as healer. If riches, if shining gifts, 
will win thee (and love is still purchased 
with gifts), she lays before thee all the 
treasures hidden under the mighty sea or 
under the roots of the hills. Ah, ever and 
again, when thou, wearied by the steep sky, 
hast cast thyself into the vesperine waters, 
she cries, " Oh, why ! Apollo, must it be the 
cerulean ocean-mother who receives thee 
when thou comest to the west weary from 
thy day's course ? What is Tethys to 
thee ? What to thee the Hesperian tide ? 
Why wilt thou bathe thy divine face in im- 
pure brine ? A better coolness, Apollo, 
thou mayst find in my shade. Come hither, 
and lay thy glories in my breast. Where 
thou liest a breeze will soothe with gentle 
sibillations our bodies strewn with dewy 
roses. Believe me, I fear not Semele's 
fate ; I fear not thy chariot, nor thy smok- 
ing sun-steeds. If thou wilt use thy fires 
right wisely, Apollo, come hither, and lay 
thy glories in my breast ! " 

Thus amorously breathes the wanton 
Earth, and all the rout of her children fol- 
low headlong after her example. For now 
over the whole world Cupid wanders, and 
at the fire of the sun rekindles his torch. 
On the lethal horns of his bow sounds a 
new string; new tips shine baleful on his 
bright arrows. Now he attempts to con- 
quer even unconquered Diana, even the 
pure Vestal as she sits by the sacred hearth. 
Venus now purges all signs of age from 
her form, and seems once more just risen 
from the warm sea. Through the marble 
walls of cities the young men cry Hymence ! 
the shores and hollow rocks give back the 
cry Io, Hymen ! Hymen himself comes 
seemlier-garbed in a new tunic, breathing 
fragrance from his crocus vest. In crowds 



33& 



LATIN POEMS 



Egrediturque frequens ad amceni gaudia 
veris 
Virgineos auro cincta puella sinus. no 
Votuin est cuique suum; votum est tamen 
omnibus unum, 
Ut sibi quern cupiat det Cytherea virum. 
Nunc quoque septena modulatur arundine 
pastor, 
Et sua quae jungat carmina Phyllis habet. 
Navita nocturno placat sua sidera cantu, 
Delphinasque leves ad vada summa vo- 
cat, 
Jupiter ipse alto cum conjuge ludit Olympo. 

Convocat et famulos ad sua festa Deos. 
Nunc etiam Satyri, cum sera crepuscula 
surgunt, 
Pervolitant celeri florea rura choro, 120 
Sylvanusque sua cyparissi fronde revinctus, 
Semicaperque Deus, semideusque caper. 
Quaeque sub arboribus Dryades latuere ve- 
tustis 
Per juga, per solos expatiantur agros. 
Per sata luxuriat fruticetaque Msenalius 
Pan; 
Vix Cybele mater, vix sibi tuta Ceres; 
Atque aliquam cupidus praedatur Oreada 
Faunus, 
Consulit in trepidos dum sibi nympha 



Jamque latet, latitansque cupit male tecta 
videri, 
Et fugit, et fugiens pervelit ipsa capi. 130 
Dii quoque non dubitant caelo praeponere 
sylvas, 
Et sua quisque sibi numina lucus habet. 
Et sua quisque diu sibi numina lucus habeto, 

Nee vos arborea, dii, precor, ite domo. 
Te referant, miseris te, Jupiter, aurea ter- 
ris 
Saecla ! quid ad nimbos, aspera tela,redis ? 
Tu saltern lente rapidos age, Phcebe, jugales 
Qua potes, et sensim tempora veris eant: 
Brumaque productas tard& ferat hispid a 
noctes, 
Ingruat et nostro serior umbra polo ! 140 



the girls go out with gold-cinctured breasts 
to take the pleasure of the pleasant spring. 
Each has a single prayer, and every one 
the same, — that Cytherea may send her 
the man she loves for husband. 

Now, too, the shepherd pipes on his seven 
reeds, and Phyllis has a song to match. The 
sailor hymns nightly to the stars; the dol- 
phins come to the surface of the waves to 
listen. Jove himself and his spouse make 
merry in Olympus, and call the subject gods 
to feast. And now, when the late twilight 
falls, fleet bands of Satyrs skim over the 
blossomy fields; and with them Sylvanus, 
cypress - crowned, half god and half goat. 
The Dryads who hide amid old trees now 
roam abroad over the ridges and the lonely 
fields. Through the sown boskets riots 
Maenalian Pan; mother Cybele and Ceres 
are scarce safe from him. Wanton Faunus 
makes prey of the oread. She flies with 
startled feet. Now she hides, but not too 
well, lest she might fail to be found; she 
flees, but even as she flees longs to be 
caught. The gods desert the sky for the 
woods of earth; each grove has its deity. 

Long may each grove have its deity ! 
Gods, desert not, I pray, your homes amid 
the trees. O Jove, bring back to the wretch- 
ed world its golden age. Why hast thou 
returned to thy clouds and harsh arrows 
of lightning ? At least do thou, Phoebus, 
curb as much as may be thy rapid team, 
and let the days of spring pass slowly. 
Let it be long ere rough winter brings us 
its tedious nights; let the shades fall later 
than their wont about our pole ! 



ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS 



337 



ELEGIA SEXTA 

AD CAROLUM DIODATUM, RURI COMMORANTEM : 

Qui, cum Idibus Decern b. scripsisset, et sua carmina excusari postuldsset si solito minus 
essent bona, quod inter lautitias quibus erat ab amicis exceptus haud satis felicem operam 
Musis dare se posse ajjfirmabat, hoc habuit responsum. 

ELEGY VI 



( To Charles Diodati, zvho, sending the author some verses from the country at Christmas- 
time, asked him to excuse their mediocrity, on the ground that they were composed amid 
the distractions of the festival season). 



The above note, given in the original edi- 
tions, explains the purport of the elegy. The 
verse-letter of Diodati's, here referred to, was 
written on the thirteenth of December, 1629, 
and Milton's reply was probably sent soon after 
Christmas. It is of extreme autobiographic 
interest, for two reasons. It contains a noble 
statement of Milton's poetic creed, at a time 
when he felt with almost equal intensity the 

Mitto tibi sanam non pleno ventre salu- 
tem, 
Qua tu distento forte carere potes. 
At tua quid nostram prolectat Musa camce- 
nam, 
Nee sinit optatas posse sequi tenebras ? 
Carmine scire velis quam te redamemque 
colamque ; 
Crede mihi vix hoc carmine scire queas. 
Nam neque noster amor modulis includitur 
arctis, 
Nee venit ad claudos integer ipse pe- 
des. 
Quam bene solennes epulas, hilaremque 
Decembrim, 
Festaque cselifugamquse coluere Deum, 10 
Deliciasque refers, hiberni gaudia ruris, 
Haustaque per lepidos Gallica musta 
focos ! 
Quid quereris refugam vino dapibusque 
poesin ? 
Carmen amat Bacchum, carmina Bacchus 
amat. 
Nee puduit Phcebum virides gestasse corym- 
bos, 
Atque hederam lauro prseposuisse suae. 
Saepius Aoniis clamavit collibus Euce 
Mista Thyoneo turba novena choro. 
Naso Corallaeis mala carmina misit ab agris; 
Non illic epulae, non sata vitis erat. 20 



softer and the sterner sides of the poet's voca- 
tion ; and it gives an account of the Hymn on 
the Nativity, just completed, or perhaps still 
under way. The picture of Christmas merry- 
making in an English country-house gains a 
peculiar charm from the queer medium of 
seventeenth century Latin in which it is con- 
veyed. 



Unsurfeited with feasting, I send you a 
good-health, for whieh your full stomach 
may give you need. Why do you tempt 
me to write verses by sending me yours ? 
Why will you not allow my Muse to stay 
in the shadow she loves ? You desire me 
to tell in verse how much I love and cherish 
you ? Believe me, that is a thing you can 
scarcely hope to learn in verse ; my love 
cannot be held in the strict bonds of metre, 
nor be put whole and unimpaired into 
measured syllables. 

How well you tell of your high f eastings, 
of your December merriment, and all the 
gaieties that celebrate the coming of the 
heavenly One to earth ! * How well you 
tell of the joys of winter in the country, 
and of the French must sipped pleasantly 
by the fireside ! But^wEy do you imply that 
a poet must keep aloof from drinking and 
feasting ? Song loves Bacchus, and Bac- 
chus loves song. Apollo was not ashamed 
to bear the green corymbus ; nay, even to 
put the ivy of the wine-god above his own 
laurel. Many a time the nine Muses have 
mixed with the Bacchic chorus crying Evce 
on the Boeotian hills. Those verses which 
Ovid sent from the fields of Thrace were 

1 A double reference is intended, to Christ and to 
Saturn ; the Roman Saturnalia was celebrated in De- 
cember. 



C"lr<~ 



338 



LATIN POEMS 



Quid nisi vina, rosasque, raceiniferumque 
Lyaeum, 
Cantavit brevibus Teia Musa modis ? 
Pindaricosque inflat numeros Teumesius 
Euan, 
Et redolet sumptum pagina quaeque me- 
rum; 
Dum gravis everso currus crepat axe supi- 
nus, 
Et volat Eleo pulvere fuscus eques. 
Quadrimoque madens Lyricen Romanus 
Iaccho 
Dulce canit Glyceran, flavicomamque 
Chloen. 
Jam quoque lauta tibi generoso mensa pa- 
ratu 
Mentis alit vires, ingeniumque fovet. 30 
Massica fcecundam despumant pocula ve- 
nam, 
Fundis et ex ipso condita metra cado. 
Addimus his artes, fusumque per intima 
Phcebum 
Corda; favent uni Bacchus, Apollo, Ceres. 
Scilicet haud minim tarn dulcia carmina 
per te, 
Numine composito, tres peperisse Deos. 
Nunc quoque Thressa tibi cselato barbitos 
auro 
Insonat arguta molliter icta manu; 
Auditurque chelys suspensa tapetia circum, 
Virgineos tremula quae regat arte pe- 
des. 40 
Ilia tuas saltern teneant spectacula Musas, 
Et revocent quantum crapula pellit iners. 
Crede mihi, dum psallit ebur, comitataque 
plectrum 
Implet odoratos festa chorea tholos, 
Percipies taciturn per pectora serpere 
Phcebum, 
Quale repentinus permeat ossa calor; 
Perque puellares oculos digitumque sonan- 
tem 
Irruet in totos lapsa Thalia sinus. 
Namque Elegia levis multorum cura deo- 
rum est, 
Et vocat ad numeros quemlibet ilia 
suos; 50 
Liber adest elegis, Eratoque, Ceresque, 
Venusque, 
Et cum purpurea matre tenellus Amor. 
Talibus inde licent convivia larga poetis, 

Saepius et veteri commaduisse mero. 
At qui bella refert, et adulto sub Jove 
caelum, 
Heroasque pios; semideosque duces, 



bad, because there were no feasts there 
and no vineyards. What but roses and the 
grape-laden vine did Anacreon sing in those 
delicate staves of his ? Teumesian Bacchus 
inspired Pindar's strain ; each page of his 
breathes ardor from the drained cup, as 
he sings of the crash of the heavy chariot 
overturned, and the rider flying by, dark 
with the dust of the Elean race-course. 
The Roman lyrist drank first of the four- 
year-old vintage, ere he sang so sweetly 
of Glycera and blond-haired Chloe. The 
sinews of thy genius, too, draw strength 
from the generously laden table. Your 
Massic cups foam with a rich vein of song ; 
from the very jar you pour a learned strain. 
Add to such incitements those of the arts, 
and of Apollo penetrant within the inmost 
chambers of your heart, and it is little 
wonder that such delightful verses come 
from you, since three gods in accord, Bac- 
chus, Apollo, and Ceres, brought them to 
birth. 

For you, too, the lute, Orpheus's instru- 
ment, gold-embossed, sounds now, gently 
touched by a master hand. In tapestried 
rooms is heard the lyre, swaying with subtle 
rhythm the feet of young girls in the dance. 
Let such gracious sights as this hold your 
Muse at gaze, and they will call back all the 
skill and ardor that dull repletion drove 
away. Trust me, when the ivory keys of 
the virginal leap under the player's fingers, 
and the crowd of dancers fills the perfumed 
chambers, you will feel the spirit of song 
stealing into your heart, penetrating your 
very bones with a sudden glow. From the 
eyes and fingers of the girlish player, Thalia 
will slip into your breast and possess it all. 

For light elegy is the care of many gods, 
and calls to its numbers whom it will ; 
Erato, Ceres, Venus, all gladly come, and 
tender stripling Love with his rosy mother. 
But the poet who will tell of wars, and of 
Heaven under adult Jove, and of pious he- 
roes, and leaders half-divine, singing now 



ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS 



339 



Et nunc sancta canit superum consulta 
deorum, 
Nunc latrata fero regna profunda cane, 
Ille quidem parce, Samii pro more magis- 
tri, 
Vivat, et innocuos praebeat herba cibos ; 60 
Stet prope fagineo pellucida lympha ca- 
tillo, 
Sobriaque e puro pocula fonte bibat. 
Additur huic scelerisque vacans et casta 
juventus, 
Et rigidi mores, et sine labe manus; 
Qualis veste nitens sacra, et lustralibus 
undis, 
Surgis ad infensos augur iture Deos. 
Hoc ritu vixisse ferunt post rapta saga- 
cem 
Lumina Tiresian, Ogygiumque Linon, 
Et lare devoto profugum Calchanta, senem- 
que 
Orpheon edomitis sola per antra feris; 70 
Sic dapis exiguus, sic rivi potor Homerus 
Dulichium vexit per freta longa virum, 
Et per monstrificam Perseise Pho3bados 
aulam, 
Et vada fcemineis insidiosa sonis, 
Perque tuas, rex ime, domos, ubi sanguine 
nigro 
Dicitur umbrarum detinuisse greges: 
Diis etenim sacer est vates, divumque sacer- 
dos, 
Spirat et occultum pectus et ora Jovem. 
At tu si quid agam scitabere (si mod6 
saltern 
Esse putas tanti uoscere siquid agam). 80 
Paciferum canimus caelesti semine regem, 
Faustaque sacratis ssecula pacta libris ; 
Vagitumque Dei, et stabulantem paupere 
tecto 
Qui suprema suo cum patre regna colit; 
Stelliparumque polum, modulantesque 
aethere turmas, 
Et subit5 elisos ad sua fana Deos. 
Dona quidem dedimus Christi natalibus 
ilia; 
Ilia sub auroram lux mihi prima tulit. 
Te quoque pressa manent patriis meditata 
cicutis; 
Tu mihi, cui recitem, judicis instar eris. 90 



the holy counsels of the gods above, and 
now the realms profound where Cerberus 
howls, — such a poet must live sparely, after 
the manner of Pythagoras, the Samian 
teacher. Herbs must furnish him his inno- 
cent food ; clear water in a beechen cup, 
sober draughts from the pure spring, must 
be his drink. His youth must be chaste 
and void of offence ; his manners strict, his 
hands without stain. He shall be like a 
priest shining in sacred vestment, washed 
with lustral waters, who goes up to make 
augury before the jealous gods. Thus 
righteously, they say, wise Tiresias lived, 
after his eyes were darkened ; and Linus, 
and Calchas, who fled from his doomed 
hearth, and Orpheus, roaming in old age 
through lonely caverns, quelling the wild 
beasts with his music. So, a spare eater 
and a drinker of water, Homer carried 
Odysseus through the long straits, through 
the monster-haunted hall of Circe, and the 
shoals where the Sirens made insidious 
music ; and through thy realms, nether- 
most king, where they say he held with 
a spell of black blood the troops of the 
shades. Yea, for the bard is sacred to the 
god ; he is their priest ; mysteriously from 
his lips and his breast he breathes Jove. \ 

But if you will know what I am doing, I \ 
will tell you, if indeed you think my doings 
worth your concern. I am singing the 
King of Heaven, bringer of peace, and the 
fortunate days promised by the holy book ; 
the wanderings of God, and the stabling 
under a poor roof of Him who rules with 
his father the realms above ; the star that 
led the wizards, the hymning of angels in 
the air, and the gods flying to their en- 
dangered fanes. This poem I made as a 
birthday gift for Christ ; the first light of 
Christmas dawn brought me the theme. ' 

The poor strains which I have piped 
musingly to my homely reed await you ; 
you, when I recite them to you, will be my 
judge. 



34o 



LATIN POEMS 



ELEGIA SEPTIMA 



Anno cctatis undevigesimo 
ELEGY VII 



This elegy constitutes a personal confession 
of an unusually intimate kind, a confession of 
" love at first sight " for a girl whom the poet 
encountered by chance in some public place 
in London. Though conceived in a tone of 
whimsical extravagance and with the conven- 
tional sentimental machinery of the pseudo- 
classic poet, it indubitably records a real ex- 
perience, and one which is significant in the 
understanding of Milton's character. The un- 
usual form of the date attached, in which the 
ordinal is put in place of the numeral, seems 
to imply that the poem was written before his 

Nondum blanda tuas leges, Amathusia, 
noram, 
Et Paphio vacuum pectus ab igne fuit. 
Saepe cupidineas, puerilia tela, sagittas, 

Atquetuum sprevi maxime numen, Amor. 
" Tu puer imbelles " dixi " transfige colum- 
bas; 
Conveniunt tenero mollia bella duci: 
Aut de passeribus tumidos age, parve, tri- 
umph os ; 
Hsec sunt militias digna trophsea tuas. 
In genus humanum quid inania dirigis 
arma? 
Non valet in fortes ista pharetra viros." 10 
Non tulit hoc Cyprius (neque enim Deus 
ullus ad iras 
Promptior), et duplici jam ferus igne 
calet. 
Ver erat, et summse radians per culmina 
villse 
Attulerat primam lux tibi, Maie, diem; 
At mihi adhuc refugam quserebant lumina 
noctem, 
Nee matutinum sustinuere jubar. 
Astat Amor lecto, pictis Amor impiger 
alis; 
Prodidit astantem mota pharetra Deum; 
Prodidit et facies, et dulce minantis ocelli, 
Et quicquid puero dignum et Amore 
fuit. 
Talis in aeterno juvenis Sigeius Olympo 20 

Miscet amatori pocula plena Jovi; 
Aut, qui formosas pellexit ad oscula nym- 
phas, 
Thiodamantseus Naiade raptus Hylas. 



nineteenth year was completed, i. e., sometime / < 
between May 1 and December 9, 1627. 

The postscript which follows the poemprob-' ' 
ably is to be taken with this elegy alone, 
though from the manner in which it is printed 
in the original editions, it may be taken to have 
a general application to the entire seven. It 
was written at a later date than the elegies to 
which it is appended, in some mood of strenu- 
ousness when the technical shortcomings of 
the verse and its occasional rather lax Ovidian 
tone made an apology seem necessary. 



I did not yet know thy laws, bland Aph- 
rodite, and my heart was still free from 
Paphian fire. Often I spoke scorn, Love, 
of thy great name, and disdained Cupid's 
arrows as puerile weapons. " Boy unfit 
for war," I said, "go shoot doves; only 
easy battles suit so delicate a chieftain. 
Or make a swelling triumph, poor child, 
over a conquest of sparrows. These are 
trophies worthy of thy warrior-ship. Why 
take up thy silly arms against mankind ? 
That quiver of thine avails not against 
strong men." The Cyprian boy could not 
endure this (there is no god swifter to an- 
ger), and at my words he burned with a 
double fire of rage. 

It was spring, and shining over the roofs 
of the town, dawn had brought the May- 
day; but my eyes were turned toward re- 
treating night, and could not endure the 
radiance of morning. Suddenly Love stood 
by my bed, Love with painted wings for 
speed. The swaying quiver betrayed the 
god where he stood; his torch betrayed 
him, and his eyes sweetly menacing, and 
whatever else about him was boyish and 
lovely. So Ganymede looks, as he brims 
the cups of amorous Jove in ever-during 
Olympus; or Hylas, who lured the beau- 
tiful nymphs to his kisses, and who was 
stolen away by the Naiad. Wrath was on 



ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS 



34i 



Addideratque iras, sed et has decuisse 
putares ; 
Addideratque truces, nee sine felle, 
minas. 
Et " Miser exemplo sapuisses tutiiis," in- 
quit; 
" Nunc mea quid possit dextera testis eris. 
Inter et expertos vires numerabere nostras, 
Et faciam vero per tua dainna fidem. 30 
Ipse ego, si nescis, strato Pythone super- 
bum 
Edomui Phcebum, cessit et ille mihi; 
Et, quoties meminit Peneidos, ipse fatetur 

Certius et gravius tela nocere mea. 
Me nequit adductum curvare peritius ar- 
cum, 
Qui post terga solet vincere, Parthus 
eques: 
Cydoniusque mihi cedit venator, et ille 

Inscius uxori qui necis author erat. 
Est etiam nobis ingens quoque victus 
Orion, 
Herculeaeque manus, Herculeusque co- 
mes. 40 
Jupiter ipse licet sua fulmina torqueat in 
me, 
Hserebunt lateri spicula nostra Jovis. 
Caetera quae dubitas melius mea tela doce- 
bunt, 
Et tua non leviter corda petenda mihi. 
Nee te, stulte, tuae poterunt defendere 
Musae; 
Nee tibi Phcebaeus porriget anguis opem." 
Dixit, et, aurato quatiens mucrone sagit- 
tam, 
Evolat in tepidos Cypridos ille sinus. 
At mihi risuro tonuit ferus ore minaci, 

Et mihi de puero non metus ullus erat. 50 
Et modo qua nostri spatiantur in urbe 
Quirites, 
Et mod6 villarum proxima rura placent. 
Turba frequens, facieque simillima turba 
dearum, 
Splendida per medias itque reditque vias ; 
Auctaque luce dies gemino fulgore corus- 
cat. 
Fallor ? an et radios hinc quoque Phce- 
bus habet ? 
Haec ego non fugi spectacula grata severus, 

Impetus et qu6 me fert juvenilis agor; 
Lumina luminibus male providus obvia 
misi, 
Neve oculos potui continuisse meos. 60 
Unam forte aliis supereminuisse notabam; 
Principium nostri lux erat ilia mali. 



him, but you would have deemed it an 
added grace ; and he spoke words of threat- 
ening cruelty, full of spite. " Wretch," he 
said, " thou hadst been wiser to learn my 
power by the spectacle of others' pain: 
now thou shalt in thine own person prove 
what my arm can do. Thou shalt be 
numbered among those who have felt my 
strength; thy pangs shall strengthen men's 
belief in me. Perhaps thou art ignorant 
that I, even I, subdued Apollo, made 
haughty by his victory over Python; to 
me that great god had to yield. Whene'er 
he thinks on Daphne, he confesses that my 
darts carry surer and deadlier harm than 
his own. The Parthian horseman, who con- 
quers as he flees, draws not his bow more 
skilfully than I. The Cydonian hunter 
yields the palm to me, and Cephalus, who 
slew his wife unwittingly. Huge Orion 
I overcame, and the strong hand of Her- 
cules, and Hercules's friend. Jove him- 
self may turn his thunderbolts against me, 
but before they strike, my arrows have 
pierced the side of Jove. If thou still 
doubtest, my weapons will teach thee the 
rest better than words, — my weapons, with 
which not lightly shall I seek thy heart. 
Deem not, fool, that thy Muses can succor 
thee, nor that the serpent of Apollo the 
healer can give thee any aid ! " So he 
spake, and, shaking his arrow with the 
golden tip, he flew away into the warm 
breast of his mother Cypris. But I smiled 
derisively at his fierce threats, and had not 
the slightest fear of the boy. 

And now I took my pleasure, sometimes 
in the city parks, where our citizens prom- 
enade, sometimes in the suburban places of 
resort. Crowds of girls, with faces like to 
the faces of goddesses, came and went radi- 
antly through the walks; the day bright- 
ened with a double splendor. Surely, the 
sun himself stole his beams from their 
faces. I was not stern with myself; I did 
not flee from the gracious spectacle, but let 
myself be led wherever youthful impulse 
directed. Rashly I sent my gaze to meet 
theirs; I could not control my eyes. Then 
by chance I noted one supreme above the 
others, and the light of her eyes was the 



342 



LATIN POEMS 



Sic Venus optaret mortalibus ipsa videri, 

Sic regina Deum conspicienda fuit. 
Hanc memor objecit nobis malus ille 
Cupido, 
Solus et hos nobis texuit ante dolos. 
Nee procul ipse vafer latuit, multaeque 
sagittae, 
Et facis a tergo grande pependit onus. 
Nee mora; nunc ciliis haesit, nunc virginis 
ori, 
Insilit nine labiis, insidet inde genis; 70 
Et quascunque agilis partes jaculator ober- 
rat, 
Hei mihi ! mille locis pectus inerme 
ferit. 
Protinus insoliti subierunt corda furores; 

Uror amans intus, flammaque totus eram. 
Interea misero quae jam mihi sola placebat 

Ablata est, oculis non reditura meis; 
Ast ego progredior tacite querebundus, et 
excors, 
Et dubius volui ssepe referre pedem. 
Findor; et hsec remanet, sequitur pars al- 
tera votum; 
Raptaque tarn subit5 gaudia flere juvat. 
Sic dolet amissum proles Junonia caelum, 81 

Inter Lemniacos praecipitata focos; 
Talis et abreptum solem respexit ad Or- 
cum 
Vectus ab attonitis Amphiaraus equis. 
Quid faciam infelix, et luctu victus ? 
Amores 
Nee licet inceptos ponere, neve sequi. 
O utinam spectare semel mihi detur amatos 

Vultus, et coram tristia verba loqui ! 
Forsitan et duro non est adamante creata, 

Forte nee ad nostras surdeat ilia preces ! 
Crede mihi, nullus sic infeliciter arsit; 91 

Ponar in exemplo primus et unus ego. 
Parce, precor, teneri cum sis Deus ales 
amoris; 
Pugnent officio nee tua facta tuo. 
Jam tuus O certe est mihi formidabilis 
arcus, 
Nate dea, jaculis nee minus igne potens: 
Et tua fumabunt nostris altaria donis, 

Solus et in Superis tu mihi summus eris. 
Deme meos tandem, verum nee deme, 
furores ; 
Nescio cur, miser est suaviter omnis 
amans : 100 

Tu mod6 da facilis, posthaec mea siqua 
futura est, 
Cuspis amaturos figat ut una duos. 



beginning of my ills. She looked as Venus 
might wish to seem to mortals; lovely to 
behold as the queen of the gods was she. 
That rascal Cupid, harboring his grudge, 
had thrown her in my path; all alone, he 
had woven this plot against me. Not far 
off the sly god was hiding; his torch and 
many arrows hung as a great load from his 
back. Not a moment did he lose. Now he 
clung to her eyelids, now to her mouth; 
thence he stole between her lips, and hid 
himself in her bosom; and wherever the 
nimble archer went, ah, me ! from a thou- 
sand points of vantage he struck my de- 
fenceless breast. Suddenly unwonted furies 
assailed my heart; I burned inly with love, 
I was all flame. Meanwhile she who was 
my only delight in misery disappeared, 
never to be given to my eyes again. 

I started on, full of mute complaining, 
heart-broken at my loss. Often I stood in 
doubt whether to go on or turn back. My 
being was divided, my body remained be- 
hind, but my thoughts went after her. I 
could have wept for the joy so suddenly 
snatched from me. Such was the grief of 
Vulcan for the heaven he had lost, when he 
was thrown down the sky into Lemnos isle ; 
thus Amphiarus borne down to Orcus by 
his astonished horses, gazed back from the 
abyss at the vanishing light of the sun. 
What shall I do, wretch that I am, and 
overcome by grief ? I cannot take up my 
love or lay it by. O, may it be granted me 
to see her loved countenance again and to 
speak with her face to face ! Perhaps she is 
not all made of adamant, mayhap she would 
not be deaf to my prayers. Surely no one 
ever suffered more in Love's flame. I may 
stand first, a prime exemplar of love-sor- 
rows. Spare me, I pray, since thou art a 
winged god of tender love ! Let not thy 
deeds refute thy office. Now, ah, now at 
last thy bow is fearful to me, thou goddess- 
born, whose arrows are potent as fire ! 
Henceforth thine altars shall smoke with 
my gifts; among all the gods thou shalt be 
for me single and supreme. Take away, 
then, my tortures — nay, take them not 
away ! I know not why it is, loving is such 
sweet wretchedness. But whatever the 
future has for me, grant me this, for thou 
canst easily, that a single dart shall transfix 
both my heart and hers, and make us lovers. 



ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS 



343 



Hcec ego mente olim Icevd, studioque supino, 

Nequitice posui vana trophcea mece. 
Scilicet abreptum sic me malus impulit error, 

Indocilisque cetas prava magistra fuit: 
Donee Socraticos umbrosa Academia rivos 

Prcebuit, admissum dedocuitque jugum. 
Protinus, extinctis ex Mo tempore fammis, 

Cincta rigent multo pectora nostra gelu; 
Unde suisfrigus metuit puer ipse sagittis, 

Et Diomedeam vim timet ipsa Venus. 



These vain trophies of my idleness I set up 
in time past, in unserious mood and with lax 
endeavor. Error hurried me astray, and my 
untaught years were «an ill mistress to me ; 
until the shady Academe [i. e. Plato's philo- 
sophy] offered me its Socratic streams, and 
loosened from my neck the yoke to which I 
had submitted. Since then, all those youthful 
flames are extinct, and my breast is rigid with 
accumulated ice ; whence Cupid himself fears 
freezing for his arrows, and Venus dreads 
my Diomedean strength. 



[EPIGRAMMATA] 
[EPIGRAMS] 



The short pieces which follow were origi- 
nally printed without the general title Epi- 
grams, under which they appear in modern 
editions, but were included under the title 
Elegies, as being written in elegiac metre. 
The four epigrams on the Gunpowder Plot are 
heavy and tasteless; they are signal illustra- 
tions of Milton's congenital lack of humor. 
The epigrams on Leonora Baroni are interest- 
ing autobiographically. It has been plausibly 
conjectured that Milton heard this famous 
singer at the concert which he speaks of at- 
tending at the palace of Cardinal Francesco 
Barberini, during his first visit to Rome, Octo- 
ber and November, 1638. Efforts have been 
made, ineffectually, to identify her with the 
" donna leggiadra " of Milton's Italian poems, 
the Bolognese lady whose novel beauty — 
" sotto nova ideapellegrina bellezza " — enthralled 
him at some period of his Italian residence. 



The Baroni were originally a Neopolitan fam- 
ily, but they had settled in Rome about a year 
before Milton's visit. Of Leonora, Bayle's 
Dictionary, quoted by Masson, says that she 
was " one of the finest voices in the world," 
and that " an infinity of beaux esprits made 
verses in her praise." It is interesting in 
this connection to note that Milton's suscepti- 
bility to music was accompanied by an almost 
complete insensibility to the appeal of the 
plastic and graphic arts, if we are to judge by 
the absence of any mention of the latter among 
his recorded impressions of Italy. 

Three "epigrams" of minor interest, en- 
titled respectively Apologus de Bustico et Hero, 
De Moro (title supplied by the editors), and 
Ad Christinam, Suecorum Reginam, will be 
found, together with three Greek pieces from 
the Sylv.e, and two epigrams on Salmasius, 
in the Appendix. 



In Proditionem Bombardicam 

Cum simul in regem nuper satrapasque 
Britannos 
Ausus es infandum, perfide Fauxe, ne- 
fas, 
Fallor ? an et mitis voluisti ex parte vi- 
deri, 
Et pensare mala cum pietate scelus ? 
Scilicet hos alti missurus ad atria cseli, 

Sulphureo curru flammivolisque rotis; 
Qualiter ille, feris caput inviolabile Par- 
cis, 
Liquit Ibrdanios turbine raptus agros. 



On the Gunpowder Plot 

When, perfidious Faux, you attempted 
your late unspeakable crime against the 
British King and Parliament, — do I mis- 
take you, or did you really want to show 
a kind of false mildness and piety in the 
midst of your wickedness ? Perhaps ; since 
you intended to send them to the high 
courts of Heaven in a chariot of sulphurous 
smoke and wheeling flame, even as Elijah, 
that head inviolable by the fierce Parcse, 
was snatched away in a whirlwind from the 
fields of Jordan. 



344 



LATIN POEMS 



In Eandem 
Siccine tentasti caelo donasse Iacobum, 

Quae septemgemino*Bellua monte lates ? 
Ni meliora tuum poterit dare munera nu- 
men, 
Parce, precor, donis insidiosa tuis. 
Ille quidem sine te consortia serus adivit 

Astra, nee inferni pulveris usus ope. 
Sic potius foedos in caelum pelle cucullos, 
Et quot habet brutos Roma profana 
Deos; 
Namque hac aut alia nisi quemque ad- 
juveris arte, 
Crede mihi, caeli vix bene scandet iter. 10 

In Eandem 
Purgatorem animae derisit Iacobus ignem, 
Et sine quo superum non adeunda do- 
mus. 
Frenduit hoc trina monstrum Latiale co- 
rona, 
Movit et horrificum cornua dena minax. 
Et " Nee inultus " ait " temnes mea sacra, 
Britanne ; 
Supplicium spreta religione dabis; 
Et, si stelligeras unquam penetraveris 
arces, 
Non nisi per flammas triste patebit iter. " 
O quarn funesto cecinisti proxima vero, 

Verbaque ponderibus vix caritura suis ! 
Nam prope Tartareo sublime rotatus ab 
igni ii 

Ibat ad jethereas, umbra perusta, plagas. 

In Eandem 
Quem mod6 Roma suis devoverat impia 
diris, 
Et Styge damnarat, Taenarioque sinu, 
Hunc, vice mutata, jam tollere gestit ad 
astra, 
Et cupit ad superos evehere usque Deos. 

In Inventorem Bombards 
Iapetionidem laudavit caeca vetustas, 

Qui tulit aetheream solis ab axe facem; 
At mihi major erit qui lurida creditur 
arma 
Et trifidum fulmen surripuisse Jovi. 

Ad Leonoram Rom^e Canentem 

Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite, 
gentes) 
Obtigit aethereis ales ab ordinibus. 



On the Same 

O Beast acrouch on the seven hills, did 
you attempt thus to send King James to 
Heaven? Unless you have power to be- 
stow better largess, forbear, I pray, your 
insidious gifts. Without the aid of your 
infernal powder he has gone, timely late, 
to the companionable stars. Do you rather 
blow skyward your base cowls, and all the 
brute gods profane Rome worships; for 
unless you aid them thus or somehow else, 
they will hardly, believe me, clamber up 
the hard road to Heaven. 



On the Same 
King James laughed at those purgato- 
rial fires through which the supernal home 
must forsooth be approached. At this the 
triple - crowned monster of the Lateran 
gnashed its teeth, and moved its ten horns 
in horrid threat, saying: "Man of Britain, 
thou shalt not mock my mysteries unpun- 
ished ; thou shalt pay for despising my reli- 
gion; and if ever thou enterest the starry 
dome of Heaven, only through flame shall 
the sorry way lie open." O how near the 
awful truth did you speak ! A little more, 
and the words had not lacked their weight. 
For almost he went, rolled high by Tar- 
tarean fire, a burnt shade, to the upper 
shores. 



On the Same 

Him whom impious Rome had vowed to 
her ire, whom she had damned to Styx and 
the Taenarian gulf, him, contrary-wise, she 
went about to send to the stars, and sought 
to carry him clean aloft to the gods. 

On the Inventor of Gunpowder 
Blind antiquity praised Prometheus, 
who brought the heavenly torch from the 
sun; but for me he shall be greater who 
stole from Jove his lurid arms and three- 
forked thunderbolt. 

To Leonora, Singing 

(At Rome) 

To every man his angel is allotted (be- 
lieve it, ye people !), his winged angel from 



ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS 



345 



Quid niirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major ? 
Nam tua prsesentem vox sonat ipsa 
Deum. 
Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia caeli, 

Per tua secreto guttura serpit agens; 
Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia 
corda 
Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono. 
Quod, si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cunc- 
taque fusus, 
In te una loquitur, caetera mutus habet. 

Ad Eandem 
Altera Torquatum cepit Leonora poetam, 

Cujus ab insano cessit amore furens. 
Ah miser ille tuo quanto feliciiis sevo 

Perditus, et propter te, Leonora, foret ! 
Et te Pieria sensisset voce canentem 

Aurea maternae fila movere lyrae ! 
Quamvis Dircaeo torsisset lumina Pentheo 

Saevior, aut totus desipuisset iners, 
Tu tamen errantes caeca vertigine sensus 

Voce eadem poteras composuisse tua; 10 
Et poteras, aegro spirans sub corde quie- 
tem, 

Flexanimo cantu restituisse sibi. 

Ad Eandem 
Credula quid liquidam Sirena, Neapoli, 
jactas, 
Claraque Parthenopes fana Acheloia- 
dos, 
Littoreamque tua def unctam Naiada ripa 
Corpore Chalcidico sacra dedisse rogo ? 
Ilia quidem vivitque, et amcena Tibridis 
unda 
Mutavit rauci murmura Pausilipi. 
Illic, Romulidum studiis ornata secundis, 
Atque homines cantu detinet atque Deos. 



the ethereal hierarchies. What wonder, 
Leonora, if a greater glory be yours ? 
Either God himself, or surely at least some 
third Mind intermediate in Heaven, thrills 
mysteriously through your throat; thrills, 
suavely accustoming mortal hearts by ten- 
der degrees to immortal sounds. Yea, if 
all things be God, and He be transfused 
through all, yet in you alone He speaks, the 
rest He possesses in silence. 

To the Same 
Another Leonora captivated Torquato, 
the poet, who went mad for love of her. 
Ah, how much happier had he been to 
lose himself in wretchedness in this your 
day, and on your dear account, hearing 
you sing with Pierian voice, and touch 
the golden strings of Mnemosyne's lyre ! 
Though he rolled his eyes more fiercely 
than Pentheus, and raved to swooning, you 
could have soothed his blind and reeling 
senses with your voice ; and breathing quiet 
into his sick breast, restored him to himself 
with your soul-moving song. 

To the Same 

Why, O credulous Naples, do you boast 

of the renowned fanes of the Siren Parthen- 

ope, daughter of Archelaus; why do you 

j boast of having given funeral to the shore - 

! nymph when she was found dead on your 

j coasts ? Behold, she lives ; she has but 

changed the murmurs of hoarse Posilippo 

for the pleasant wave of Tiber. There, 

adorned by the love and favor of the Ro- 

I mans, she holds both men and gods with 

I her singing. 



346 



LATIN POEMS 



SYLVARUM LIBER — POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 

IN OBITUM PROCANCELLARII MEDICI 

A?mo cztatis 17 

ON THE DEATH OF THE VICE-CHANCELLOR, A PHYSICIAN 

{Misdated Anno cetatis 16, in editions 0/164$ an d l &73) 



The personage here celebrated in Horatian 
verse was John Gostlin, M. D., twice Vice- 
chancellor of the University of Cambridge, 
whose death occurred in October, 1626, at the 
beginning of Milton's third academic year. 
The verses are devoid of the personal accent, 

Parere Fati discite legibus, 
Manusque Parcse jam date supplices, 
Qui pendulum telluris orbem 
Iapeti colitis nepotes. 
Vos si relicto Mors vaga Tsenaro 
Semel vocarit flebilis, heu ! morse 
Tentantur incassum dolique; 

Per tenebras Stygis ire certum est. 
Si destinatam pellere dextera 
Mortem valeret, non ferus Hercules 10 
Nessi venenatus cruore 
JEniathia jacuisset (Eta; 
Nee fraude turpi Palladis invidae 
Vidisset occisum Ilion Hectora, aut 
Quem larva Pelidis peremit 
Ense Locro, Jove lacrymante. 
Si triste Fatum verba Hecateia 
Fugare possint, Telegoni parens 
Vixisset infamis, potentique 

iEgiali soror usa virga. 20 

Numenque trinum fallere si queant 
Artes medentum, ignotaque gramina, 
Non gnarus herbarum Machaon 
Eurypyli cecidisset hasta; 
Lsesisset et nee te, Philyreie, 
Sagitta Echidnae perlita sanguine ; 
Nee tela te fulmenque avitum, 
Caese puer genetricis alvo. 
Tuque, O alumno major Apolline, 
Gentis togatse cui regimen datum, 30 

Frondosa quem nunc Cirrha luget, 
Et mediis Helicon in undis, 
Jam praefuisses Palladio gregi 
Laetus superstes, nee sine gloria; 
Nee puppe lustrasses Charontis 
Horribiles barathri recessus. 



except at the close, where we may perhaps 
detect a strain of warmer feeling breaking 
through the tone of exaggerated eulogy con- 
ventionally accepted as the proper one for such 
academic verse-tributes. 



Children of Japetus, who inhabit the 
pendulous orb of earth, learn to bow down 
to fate, and raise hands of humble suppli- 
cation to the Parcae. If once wandering 
Death coming from Tartarus calls you, 
poor wretches, in vain shall you resort to 
stratagem and delay. Every one must go 
through the shades of Styx. If strength 
of arm availed to ward off destined death, 
fierce Hercules would not have fallen on 
Macedonian Oeta, poisoned by the blood 
of Nessus ; nor would Ilion have seen Hec- 
tor slain through the guile of envious Pal- 
las; nor Sarpedon, whom the phantom of 
Achilles slew with the Locrian sword, while 
Jove shed tears of blood. If words of 
witchcraft could forestall Fate, wicked 
Circe would have lived on, and Medea with 
the magic wand to help her. If arts of 
medicine and knowledge of mysterious 
plants could thwart the triune goddess, the 
son of iEsculapius, with all his skill in 
herbs, would not have fallen before the 
spear of Eurypylus; nor would the arrow 
of Hercules, smeared with the blood of 
Hydra, have undone thee, Cheiron; nor 
Jove's hated thunder thee, iEsculapius. 

And if lore in medicine availed, you, 
Vice-chancellor, to whom was given direc- 
tion over the gowned throng of the schools, 
and who were more learned than your tutor 
Apollo, would not now be mourned by the 
leafy city of Cirrha at Parnassus' foot, nor 
by Helicon sitting amid its springs. You 
would still survive glad and honored to 
have charge over Pallas's flock. You would 
not have gone in Charon's boat to visit the 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



347 



At fila rupit Persephone tua, 
Irata cum te viderit artibus 
Succoque pollenti tot atris 
Faucibus eripuisse Mortis. 
Colende Prseses, membra precor tua 
Molli quiescant cespite, et ex tuo 
Crescant rosse calthseque busto, 
Purpureoque hyacinthus ore. 
Sit mite de te judicium iEaci, 
Subrideatque iEtnsea Proserpina, 
Interque felices perennis 
Elysio spatiere campo ! 



awful abyss. But Persephone slit the thread 
of your life, angry when she saw how many 
lives you snatched from the black jaws of 
death by the art of your potent medicines. 
Loved master, I pray that your limbs may 
rest quiet beneath the sod, and that from 
your grave roses may spring, and marigold, 
and the purple-mouthed hyacinth. May 
iEacus pronounce judgment mildly on you, 
and Proserpina give you a furtive smile, 
and may you walk forever in the Elysian 
fields among the blessed. 



IN QUINTUM NOVEMBRIS 

Anno atatis 17 

ON THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER, ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
GUNPOWDER PLOT 



The Gunpowder Plot, with the accessories 
which popular bigotry and ignorance accumu- 
lated around it, was long a favorite subject for 
academic versifying. The most elaborate ef- 
fort in this kind is the Locustce, or Apollyonists, 
of Phineas Fletcher, a Cambridge university 
poet whose work had a traceable influence upon 
Milton's later production. After Fletcher's 
Locustce, the present poem, written in 1626, for 

Jam pius extrema veniens Iacobus ab arcto 
Teucrigenas populos, lateque patentia regna 
Albionum tenuit, jamque inviolabile fcedus 
Sceptra Caledoniis conjunxerat Anglica 

Scotis : 
Pacificusque novo, felix divesque, sedebat 
In solio, occultique doli securus et hostis: 
Cum ferus ignifluo regnans Acheronte ty- 

rannus, 
Eumenidum pater, sethereo vagus exul 

Olympo, 
Forte per immensum terrarum erraverat 

orbem, 
Dinumerans sceleris socios, vernasque 

fideles, 10 

Participes regni post f unera mcesta futuros. 
Hie tempestates medio ciet aere diras; 
Illic unanimes odium struit inter amicos: 
Armat et invictas in mutua viscera gentes, 
Regnaque olivifera vertit florentia pace; 
Et quoscunque videt purse virtutis amantes, 
Hos cupit adjicere imperio, fraudumque 

magister 
Tentat inaccessum sceleri corrumpere pec- 
tus: 



the twenty-first anniversary of Guy Fawkes's 
Day, is perhaps the most notable. It is a very 
youthful performance, turgid in style and un- 
restrained in its vituperation of Catholicism ; 
but it has certain Miltonic qualities notwith- 
standing, oddly distorted by the double con- 
vention of matter and of manner to which the 
young poet is here subjected. 



Good King James, coming from the far 
north, had begun his rule over the descend- 
ants of Brut and the broad realms of Al- 
bion, and inviolable treaty had joined the 
sceptres of England and Scotland. Rich, 
happy, and at peace, he was sitting in his 
new land, secure both from open enemies 
and from secret guile. But the fierce ty- 
rant who rules over Acheron's fiery flood, 
the father of the Eumenides, the rest- 
less outcast from Heaven, was wandering 
through the world, numbering his associ- 
ates in evil and his faithful slaves, sharers 
after death in his sad realms. Here he 
rouses dire tempests in mid-air; there he 
puts hatred between loving friends. He in- 
cites invincible peoples to war against each 
other, and lays waste kingdoms that bloom 
with the olive of peace. Whomever he sees 
in love with purity and virtue, he longs to 
subdue to his rule; and he tries with all his 
master-arts of fraud to corrupt breasts into 
which evil has no entrance. He lays silent 



348 



LATIN POEMS 



Insidiasque locat tacitas, cassesque latentes 
Tendit, ut incautos rapiat, ceu Caspia 

tigris 20 

Iusequitur trepidam deserta per avia prae- 

dam 
Nocte sub illuni, et somno nictantibus astris. 
Talibus infestat populos Suminanus et 

urbes, 
Cinctus caeruleae fumanti turbine flammae. 
Jamque fluentisonis albentia rupibus arva 
Apparent, et terra Deo dilecta marino, 
Cui noraen dederat quondam Neptunia 

proles, 
Araphitryoniaden qui non dubitavit atro- 

cem, 
iEquore tranato, furiali poscere bello, 
Ante expugnatae crudelia saecula Trojae. 30 
At siinul hanc, opibusque et festa pace 

beatam, 
Aspicit, et pingues donis Cerealibus agros, 
Quodque magis doluit, venerantem numina 

veri 
Sancta Dei populum, tandem suspiria rupit 
Tartareos ignes et luridum olentia sulphur; 
Qualia Trinacria trux ab Jove clausus in 

Mtn& 
Efflat tabifico monstrosus ab ore Typhceus. 
Ignescunt oculi, stridetque adamantinus 

ordo 
Dentis, ut armorum f ragor, ictaque cuspide 

cuspis ; 
Atque " Pererrato solum hoc lacrymabile 

mundo 40 

Inveni " dixit; "gens haec mihi sola re- 

bellis, 
Contemtrixque jugi, nostraque potentior 

arte. 
Ilia tamen, mea si quicquam tentamina 

possunt, 
Non feret hoc impune diu, non ibit inulta." 
Hactenus; et piceis liquido natat aere 

pennis: 
Qua volat, adversi praecursant agmine 

venti, 
Densantur nubes, et ere bra tonitrua ful- 
gent. 
Jamque pruinosas velox superaverat 

Alpes, 
Et tenet Ausoniae fines. A parte sinistra 
Nimbifer Apenninus erat, priscique Sa- 

bini; 5° 

Dextra veneficiis infamis Hetruria; nee 

non 
Te furtiva, Tibris, Thetidi videt oscula 

dantem: 



plots, stretches hidden snares, to seize the 
incautious; like the Caspian lion, who fol- 
lows his timid prey through pathless wilds 
under a moonless sky where the stars blink 
drowsily. With no worse destruction does 
Summanus, the Etruscan thunder-god, come 
upon the cities and the peoples, wreathed 
in a whirlwind of smoke and blue flame. 

And now, in his flight, Satan sees appear 
the fields girdled by white wave-beaten 
cliffs, the land loved by the sea -god, 
named of old from Neptune's son Albion, 
who feared not to cross the sea and give 
furious battle to Herakles, after the cruel 
cycles of defeated Troy. He gazes on this 
land, happy in wealth and festal peace, and 
on the fields rich laden with grain, and — 
what irks him more — on a people worship- 
ing the spirit of the true God. At the 
sight he breaks forth in sighs that flame 
with hellish fire and reek with lurid sul- 
phur, such sighs as the monster Typhoeus, 
shut up in Mt. iEtna by Jupiter, breathes 
from his pestilential mouth. His eyes 
blaze and the adamant of his grinding teeth 
sounds like the clashing of arms and the 
shock of spear against spear. " This," he 
says, " is the one lamentable sight I have 
seen in my wanderings through the world. 
This people alone is rebellious against me, 
scorning my yoke and stronger than my 
arts. They shall not long do so with im- 
punity, if my efforts are of any avail; this 
land shall not go unpunished." And as 
he ceases to speak his pitchy wings swim 
through the air. Wherever he flies, rush 
contrary winds in hosts, clouds gather, and 
lightning flashes thick. 

Now his swift flight had carried him be- 
yond the rimy Alps to the borders of Italy. 
On his left hand were the ancient land of 
the Sabines and the cloud-wrapped Apen- 
nine; on his right Etruria, ill-famed for its 
poisoners. Thee too, Tiber, he saw, giving 
furtive kisses to Thetis. Soon he stood on 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



349 



Hinc Mavortigenae consistit in arce Quirini. 
Reddiderant dubiam jam sera crepuscula 

lucem, 
Cum circumgreditur totam Tricoronifer 

urbem, 
Panificosque Deos portat, scapulisque viro- 

rum 
Evehitur; praeeunt submisso poplite reges, 
Et inendicantum series longissima f ratrum ; 
Cereaque in manibus gestant funalia caeci, 
Cimmeriis nati in tenebris vitamque tra- 

hentes. 60 

Templa dein multis subeunt lucentia taedis 
(Vesper erat sacer iste Petro), fremitusque 

canentum 
Saepe tholos implet vacuos, et inane loco- 
rum: 
Qualiter exululat Bromius, Bromiique ca- 

terva, 
Orgia cantantes in Echionio Aracyntho, 
Dum tremit attonitus vitreis Asopus in 

undis, 
Et procul ipse cava responsat rupe Cithae- 

ron. 
His igitur tandem solenni more peractis, 
Nox senis amplexus Erebi taciturna reli- 

quit, 
Praecipitesque impellit equos stimulante 

flagello, 70 

Captum oculis Typhlonta, Melanchsetemque 

ferocem, 
Atque Acherontaeo prognatam patre Siopen 
Torpidam, et hirsutis horrentem Phrica 

capillis. 
Interea regum domitor, Phlegetontius 

haeres, 
Ingreditur thalamos (neque enim secretus 

adulter 
Producit steriles molli sine pellice noctes) ; 
At vix compositos somnus claudebat ocellos 
Cum niger umbrarum dominus, rectorque 

silentum, 
Praedatorque hominum, falsa sub imagine 

tectus 
Astitit. Assumptis micuerunt tempora 

canis ; 80 

Barba sinus promissa tegit; cineracea longo 
Syrmate verrit humum vestis; pendetque 

cucullus 
Vertice de raso; et, ne quicquam desit ad 

artes, 
Cannabeo lumbos constrinxit fune salaces, 
Tarda fenestratis figens vestigia calceis. 
Talis, uti fama est, vasta Franciscus eremo 
Tetra vagabatur solus per lustra ferarum, 



the citadel of Mars's son Quirinus, in the 
dubious twilight. It was St. Peter's Eve, 
and through the great city the Pope was 
going in procession, borne on the shoul- 
ders of men, and carrying the Host. Kings 
bowed the knee before him; long lines of 
mendicant friars bore in their hands wax 
tapers, — blind souls all, born and bred in 
Cimmerian darkness ! Soon they entered 
the churches which shone with their many 
torches. The voices of the singers filled the 
hollow domes with noise like the howling of 
Bacchus and his crew, when they hymn their 
orgies on Theban Aracynthus, while Asopus 
trembles astonished in his glassy waves, and 
Cithaeron afar off answers from his hollow 
cliff. 

When at last these rites of customary 
pomp were done, Night left silently the 
arms of old Erebus, and goaded her four 
horses headlong across the sky, — Blind- 
eyes, and fierce Black-hair, and torpid 
Whist-of-Hell, and Shudder wrapped in 
her streaming mane. 

Meanwhile the Pope, subduer of kings 
and heir of Phlegython, entered his adul- 
terous chamber ; but scarcely had sleep 
sealed his eyes when the black lord of the 
shades, ruler of the silences and preyer 
upon men, stood in a false shape at his 
bed-side. His temples shone with snowy 
hair ; a long beard covered his breast ; his 
ashen vestment swept the ground in long 
folds. From his shaven head hung a cowl ; 
and as a last touch of art, he had bound his 
salt loins with a rope of hemp, and moved 
his tattered sandals in slow dissimulated 
steps. Such a figure was Francis the ere- 
mite, when he wandered, as they tell, alone, 
through the dark haunts of wild beasts, 
subduing wolves and Libyan lions, and 



35° 



LATIN POEMS 



Sylvestrique tulit geuti pia verba salutis 
Impius, atque lupos domuit, Libycosque 

leones. 89 

Subdolus at tali Serpens velatus amictu 
Solvit in has fallax ora execrantia voces: 
" Dormis, nate ? Etiamne tuos sopor op- 

primit artus ? 
Immemor O fidei, pecorumque oblite tuo- 

rum ! 
Dum cathedram, venerande, tuam dia- 

demaque triplex 
Bidet Hyperboreo gens barbara nata sub 

axe, 
Dumque pharetrati spernunt tua jura Bri- 

tanni: 
Surge, age ! surge piger, Latius quern 

Caesar adorat, 
Cui reserata patet convexi janua cseli; 
Turgentes animos et fastus frange procaces, 
Sacrilegique sciant tua quid maledictio pos- 

sit, 100 

Et quid Apostolieae possit custodia clavis; 
Et memor Hesperian disjectam uleiscere 

classem, 
Mersaque Iberorum lato vexilla profundo, 
Sanetorumque cruci tot corpora fixa pro- 

brosae, 
Thermodoontea nuper regnante puella. 
At tu si tenero mavis torpescere lecto, 
Crescentesque negas hosti contundere vires, 
Tyrrhenum implebit numeroso milite pon- 

tum, 
Signaque Aventino ponet fulgentia colle; 
Relliquias veterum franget, flammisque 

cremabit, no 

Sacraque calcabit pedibus tua colla pro- 

fanis, 
Cujus gaudebant soleis dare basia reges. 
Nee tamen hunc bellis et aperto Marte 

lacesses ; 
Irritus ille labor; tu callidus utere fraude: 
Quaalibet haereticis disponere retia fas est. 
Jamque ad consilium extremis rex magnus 

ab oris 
Patricios vocat, et procerum de stirpe cre- 

atos, 
Grandaevosque patres trabea canisque ver- 

endos: 
Hos tu membratim poteris conspergere in 

auras, 119 

Atque dare in cineres, nitrati pulveris igne 
xEdibus injecto, qua convenere, sub imis. 
Protinus ipse igitur quoscunque habet An- 

fflia fidos 



bearing to the forest people pious words of 
salvation, though himself was impious. 

Thus deceitfully clad, the false Serpent 
opened his execrable lips and spake : " Dost 
thou sleep, my son ? Does slumber oppress 
thy limbs ? O unmindful of the Faith, and 
forgetful of thy flock ! Canst thou sleep 
while a barbarous people of the north laugh 
at thy throne and thy triple diadem, thou 
whom all should venerate ? Canst thou 
sleep while the quiver-bearing Britons spurn 
thy laws ? Come, arise ! arise ! thou sloth- 
ful one, whom even Roman Emperors adore, 
and to whom the locked gates of the sky 
lie open. Break their pride and shameless 
insolence ! Let their sacrilegious eyes see 
what thy malediction can do, and what the 
custody of the apostolic key. Take thought 
to avenge the scattered armada of Spain, 
the Iberian standards overwhelmed in the 
broad deep, and all the bodies of thy saints 
who died on the ignominious cross during 
the late reign of the Amazonian queen. 1 
If thou pref errest to drowse in thy soft bed 
and refuse to crush the growing strength of 
the enemy, he will soon fill the Tyrrhenian 
sea with his ships, and plant his shining 
standards on the Aventine hill. He will 
break the relics of old saints and burn them 
with fire. He will plant his profane heel 
on thy neck, thou the very soles of whose 
feet kings now rejoice to kiss. But do not 
assault him with open war ; that would be 
labor lost. Rather use cunning and fraud; 
it is righteous to set any kind of trap for 
heretics. Just now their king calls from far 
and wide his great men to council, his lords 
and commons, and aged bishops venerable 
with robe and snowy hair. These thou canst 
blow limb from limb, their ashes thou canst 
scatter to the wind, by placing nitrous- 
powder beneath the building where they 
convene. Straightway therefore do thou 
admonish of the proposed deed all those in 
England who are still faithful. Who will 

1 The reference is to the persecution of the Catholics 
under Elizabeth. 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



35 1 



Propositi factique mone: quisquamne tuo- 

runi 
Audebit summi non jussa facessere Papae ? 
Perculsosque metu subito, casuque stu- 

pentes, 
Invadat vel Gallus atrox, vel saevus Iberus. 
Saecula sic illic tandem Mariana redibunt, 
Tuque in belligeros iteruna dominaberis 

Anglos. 
Et, nequid timeas, divos divasque secundas 
Accipe, quotque tuis celebrantur minima 

fastis." 130 

Dixit, et adscitos ponens malefidus amictus 
Fugit ad infandam, regnuni illaetabile, 

Lethen. 
Jam rosea Eoas pandens Tithonia portas 
Vestit inauratas redeunti lumine terras; 
Mosstaque adhuc nigri deplorans funera 

nati 
Irrigat ambrosiis montana cacumina guttis ; 
Cum somnos pepulit stellatae janitor aulae, 
Nocturnos visus et somnia grata revolvens. 

Est locus aeterna septus caligine noctis, 
Vasta ruinosi quondam fundamina tecti, 
Nunc torvi spelunca Phoni, Prodotaeque 

bilinguis, 141 

Effera quos uno peperit Discordia partu. 
Hie inter caementa jacent praeruptaque saxa 
Ossa inhumata virum, et trajecta cadavera 

ferro; 
Hie Dolus intortis semper sedet ater ocel- 

lis, 
Jurgiaque, et stimulis armata Calumnia 

fauces ; 
Et Furor, atque viae moriendi mille, viden- 

tur, 
Et Timor; exanguisque locum circumvolat 

Horror; 
Perpetu6que leves per muta silentia Manes 
Exululant; tellus et sanguine conscia stag- 

nat. 150 

Ipsi etiam pavidi latitant penetralibus 

antri 
Et Phonos et Prodotes; nulloque sequente 

per antrum, 
Antrum horrens, scopulosum, atrum ferali- 

bus umbris, 
Diffugiuut sontes, et retrb lumina vortunt. 
Hos pugiles Romae per ssecula longa fideles 
Evocat antistes Babylonius, atque itafatur: 
"Finibus occiduis circumfusum incolit 

aequor 
Gens exosa mihi; prudens Natura negavit 
Indignam penitus nostro conjungere mundo. 
Illuc, sic jubeo, celeri contendite gressu, 160 



dare to refuse obedience to his Pope ? 
Then, when the nation is seized with panic 
terror, or stupefied by the catastrophe, either 
the Gaul or the savage Spaniard will invade 
them, and the days of Queen Mary will 
return. Once more thou shalt rule over the 
martial English. And, that thou mayest 
put away all fear, I tell thee that all the 
gods and goddesses, as many as thy church- 
rites celebrate, favor the plan." So speak- 
ing, he laid aside the dress he had assumed, 
and fled to the joyless realms of Lethe. 

Now rosy dawn, opening the eastern 
gates, gilded the earth with returning light. 
Sorrowing for dead Memnon, she scattered 
the mountain tops with ambrosial tears. 
The porter of the heavenly halls drove 
away sleep, and rolled back the dreams 
and visions of the night. 

There is a place girt eternally with the 
darkness of night, the vast foundations of a 
building long since given to ruin, now the 
cave of fierce Murder and double-tongued 
Treachery, whom the hag Discord brought 
forth at one birth. Here amid heaps of 
rubble and broken stones lie the unburied 
bodies of men, corpses impaled on steel. 
Here forever sits Craft, black, with dis- 
torted eyes ; and Contention ; and Calumny 
with viper jaws; and Fury ; and Fear ; and 
a thousand types of death. Pale Horror 
flies about the place. Perpetually through 
the silences howl the insubstantial ghosts. 
The earth is soaked with blood. In the in- 
most recesses of the cavern Murder and 
Treachery tremble, and though no one pur- 
sues them, they flee guiltily among the 
jagged stones and fierce shadows, casting 
back their eyes in terror. 

These champions of Rome, faithful 
through long ages, the Babylonish priest 
[the Pope] calls together, and addresses 
thus : " On the western confines of the 
world dwells a people hateful to me ; their 
land is sea-girt, for scrupulous Nature has 
not held it worthy to be joined closely to 
our world. Thither, I command you, hasten 



3S- 



LATIN POEMS 



Tartareoque leves difflentur pulvere in 

auras 
Et rex et pariter satrapae, scelerata propago ; 
Et quotquot fidei caluere cupidine verae 
Consilii socios adhibete, operisque ininis- 

tros." 
Finierat: rigidi cupide paruere gemelli. 

Interea longo flectens curvamine caelos 
Despicit aetherea Dominus qui fulgurat 

arce, 
Vanaque perversa? ridet conamina turbae, 
Atque sui causam populi volet ipse tueri. 
Esse ferunt spatium, quk distat ab Aside 

terra 170 

Fertilis Europe, et spectat Mareotidas un- 

das; 
Hie turris posita est Titanidos ardua 

Famae, 
-ZErea, lata, sonans, rutilis vicinior astris 
Quani superimpositum vel Athos vel Pelion 

Ossae. 
Mille fores aditusque patent, totidemque 

fenestrae, 
Amplaque per tenues translucent atria 

muros. 
Exeitat hie varios plebs agglomerata susur- 

ros; 
Qualiter instrepitant circum mulctralia 

bombis 
Agmina muscarum, aut texto per ovilia 

junco, 
Dum Canis aestivum caeli petit ardua cul- 

men. 180 

Ipsa quidem summa sedet ultrix matris in 

arce: 
Auribus innumeris cinctum caput eminet 

olli, 
Queis sonitum exiguum trahit, atque levis- 

sima captat 
Murmura, ab extremis patuli confinibus 

or bis ; 
Nee tot, Aristoride, servator inique juvencae 
Isidos, immiti volvebas lumina vultu, 
Lumina non unquam tacito nutantia somno, 
Lumina subjectas late spectantia terras. 
Istis ilia solet loca luce carentia saepe 
Perlustrare, etiam radianti impervia soli; 
Millenisque loquax auditaque visaque Un- 
guis 191 
Cuilibet effundit temeraria; veraque men- 

dax 
Nunc minuit, mod5 confictis sermonibus 

auget. 
Sed tamen a nostro meruisti carmine 

laudes. 



quickly. As many men as you find burning 
with desire of the true faith, take them to 
you as helpers and associates ; then, with 
gunpowder blow the king and his chiefs, 
vile race that they are, into thin air." He 
ended, and the harsh twins [Murder and 
Treachery] obeyed him eagerly. 

Meantime the Lord, who moveth the 
heavens in a wide circle and lighteneth 
from the ethereal citadel, looks down, and 
smiles at the vain plottings of perverse 
men, and will himself safeguard his people's 
cause. 

Men tell of a place, midway between 
fertile Europe and the Asian land, looking 
toward the waters of Lake Maeotis. Here 
is placed the tower of Rumor, daughter of 
the Titan Earth. Of brass is the great 
tower, broad and resonant, nearer the ruddy 
stars than Athos, or Pelion piled on Ossa. 
A thousand doors stand open, and a thou- 
sand windows. Through the thin beaten 
walls gleam the ample courts within. Here 
crowds of people make a various whispering, 
like the buzzing of swarms of flies about 
the milk -pails or through the wattles of 
the sheep-cotes, when the Dog-star climbs 
to the summit of the summer sky. Throned 
on high sits Rumor herself ; about her head 
grow innumerable ears, by whose aid she 
gathers in the slightest sound, the lightest 
murmur, from the ends of the earth. More 
eyes she has than thou, Argus, unjust keeper 
of the cow Io, eyes that never close in sleep, 
but continually look abroad over the lands 
beneath ; with them she is wont to search 
through places void of light, impervious 
even to the sun's rays. With a thousand 
tongues she pours out in unconsidering 
speech to any chance comer all that she 
sees or hears, now making less the truth, 
now swelling it with imagined fabrications. 

But, for all that, O Rumor, thou hast 
merited well at our hands, by reason of one 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



353 



Fama, bonum quo non aliud veracius ullum, 
Nobis digna cani, nee te memorasse pigebit 
Carmine tarn longo; servati scilicet Angli 
Officiis, vaga diva, tuis tibi reddinius sequa. 
Te Dens, seternos motu qui temperat ignes, 
Fulmiue prsemisso, alloquitur, terraque tre- 

mente: 200 

" Fama, siles ? an te latet impia Papista- 

rum 
Conjurata cohors in meque meosque Bri- 

tannos, 
Et nova sceptrigero credes meditata 

Iacobo ? " 
Nee plura: ilia statim sensit mandata 

Tonantis, 
Et, satis ante fugax, stridentes induit alas, 
Induit et variis exilia corpora plumis; 
Dextra tubam gestat Temesseo ex sere sono- 

rara. 
Nee mora; jam pennis cedentes remigat 

auras, 
Atque parum est cursu celeres prsevertere 

nubes; 
Jam ventos, jam solis equos, post terga reli- 

quit: 210 

Et primb Angliacas, solito de more, per 

urbes 
Ambiguas voces incertaque murmura spar- 
git; 
Mox arguta dolos et detestabile vulgat 
Proditionis opus, nee non facta horrida 

dictu, 
Authoresque addit sceleris, nee garrula 

csecis 
Insidiis loca structa silet. Stupuere relatis, 
Et pariter juvenes, pariter tremuere pu- 

ella? 
Effoetique senes pariter, tantseque ruinse 
Sensus ad setatem subito penetraverat om- 

nem. 
Attamen interea populi miserescit ab alto 
iEthereus Pater, et crudelibus obstitit 

ausis 221 

Papicolum. Capti pcenas raptantur ad 

acres; 
At pia thura Deo et grati solvuntur lion- 
ores: 
Compita lseta focis genialibus omnia fu- 

mant; 
Turba choros juvenilis agit; Quintoque 

Novembris 
Nulla dies toto occurrit celebratior anno. 



good deed, than which there was never a 
better. Thou art worthy to be praised in 
my song ; I shall not be reproached for the 
length of my celebration of thee. For 
through thy offices, uncertain goddess, the 
English were saved, and we should render 
thee fit recompense. God, who tempers 
with motion the eternal fires, sent forth His 
thunderbolt, and while the earth shook 
therewith, thus spake to thee : " Rumor, 
art thou silent ? Does the impious plot of 
the Papists against me and my Britains 
escape thee, and the murder meditated 
against king James ? " No more He spake, 
but straightway she heeds the mandates of 
the Thunderer ; and, swift before, now she 
binds to her light body strident wings of 
various plumage, and in her right hand takes 
a horn of sounding brass. She tarries not. 
Her wings oar the yielding atmosphere. 
'T is not enough for her to pass in flight the 
driving clouds ; she leaves the winds behind 
now, and now the horses of the Sun. First, 
as is her wont, she scatters vague whispers, 
uncertain rumors, through the English cit- 
ies ; then with keener voice publishes the 
designs of the enemy and his detestable 
work of guile ; she reveals the facts in all 
their horror and adds in her garrulity the 
very authors of the crime and the place 
prepared for its execution. At her tale 
young men stand stupefied, maidens tremble, 
and weak old men ; the sense of the awful 
ruin to come overwhelms all ages equally. 
But meanwhile the Heavenly Father pities 
this people from on high, and frustrates 
the daring cruelty of the Papists. The 
plotters are captured and dragged to tor- 
ture. Incense and honors are offered to 
God in gratitude ; all altars smoke with 
genial fires. The young men dance. No 
day in all the year is more celebrated than 
the Fifth of November. 



354 



LATIN POEMS 



IN OBITUM PR^SULIS ELIENSIS 

Anno cetatis 17 

ON THE DEATH OF THE BISHOP OF ELY 



This poem is parallel, in every respect ex- 
cept that of verse - form, with Elegy III on 
the death of Dr. Lancelot Andre wes, Bishop 
of Winchester. Dr. Nicholas Felton, Bishop of 
Ely, was likewise a Cambridge man, and had 
likewise been Master of Pembroke. His death 
occurred in October, 1626, only a few days 
after that of his brother-bishop. No connec- 

Adhuc madentes rore squalebant gense, 

Et sicca nondum lumina 
Adhuc liquentis imbre turgebant salis 

Quern nuper effudi pius 
Dura racesta charo justa persolvi rogo 

Wintoniensis Prsesulis, 
Cum centilinguis Fama (proh ! semper mali 

Cladisque vera nuntia) 
Spargit per urbes divitis Britannise, 

Populosque Neptuno satos, 10 

Cessisse Morti et ferreis Sororibus, 

Te, generis humani decus, 
Qui rex sacrorum ilia fuisti in insula 

Quae nomen Anguillse tenet. 
Tunc inquietum pectus ira protinus 

Ebulliebat fervida, 
Tumulis potentem ssepe devovens deam: 

Nee vota Naso in Ibida 
Concepit alto diriora pectore; 

Graiusque vates parciiis 20 

Turpem Lycambis execratus est dolum, 

Sponsamque Neobulen suam. 
At ecce ! diras ipse dum fundo graves, 

Et imprecor Neci necem, 
Audisse tales videor attonitus sonos 

Leni, sub aura, flamine: 
" Csecos furores pone; pone vitream 

Bilemque et irritas minas. 
Quid temere violas non nocenda numina, 

Subitbque ad iras percita ? 30 

Non est, ut arbitraris elusus miser, 

Mors atra Noctis filia, 
Erebove patre creta, sive Erinnye, 

Vastove nata sub Chao: 
Ast ilia, cselo missa stellato, Dei 

Messes ubique colligit; 
Animasque mole carnea reconditas 

In lucem et auras evocat, 
(Ut cum fugaces excitant Horse diem, 

Themidos Jovisque filise,) 40 



tion of a personal sort is known to have existed 
between Dr. Felton and Milton, though the 
tone of the poem might seem to imply such a 
connection. The concluding verses, in spite of 
their somewhat conventional phrasing, are pre- 
monitory of Milton's power to suggest the vast- 
ness of cosmic space. 



My cheeks were still damp and stained, 
and my swollen eyes not yet dry from 
the tears I had shed in doing my sad duty 
over the bier of Winchester's bishop, when 
hundred tongued Rumor (O, always true 
messenger of ill !) spread through the cities 
of rich Britain and among the people 
sprung from Neptune, the news that you, 
who were the king of the saints in the 
island of Ely, had yielded to death and the 
dire Sisters. Then straightway ire kindled 
in my unquiet breast, and often I cursed 
the potent goddess of the grave, with curses 
more savage than Ovid conceived in his 
Ibis. More sparingly did the gray bard 
Archilochus curse the treachery of Ly- 
cambes, and Neobule, his own betrothed. 
But lo, while I was dissolved with rage 
and was calling down destruction upon the 
Destroyer, methought I heard such words 
as these: " Put away thy blind wrath; choke 
down thy rage and thy unavailing threats. 
Why dost thou rashly violate the powers 
which cannot be harmed, but which may 
be moved to sudden wrath ? Death is not, 
— as thou deemest, poor deluded soul, — 
the dark daughter of Night, born of Erebus 
or Erinys in the vasts of Chaos. No, she 
is sent from starry heaven to reap every- 
where the fields of God. Souls hidden un- 
der the weight of flesh she calls into the 
air and the light, even as the fleet Hours, 
daughters of Themis and Jove, bring forth 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



355 



Et sempiterni ducit ad vultus Patris, 

At justa raptat impios 
Sub regna furvi luctuosa Tartari 

Sedesque subterraneas. 
Hanc ut vocantem laetus audivi, cit6 

Foedum reliqui carcereni, 
Volatilesque faustus inter milites 

Ad astra sublimis feror, 
Vates ut olim raptus ad caelum senex, 

Auriga currus ignei. 5c 

Non me Bootis terruere lucidi 

Sarraca tarda frigore, aut 
Formidolosi Scorpionis brachia; 

Non ensis, Orion, tuus. 
Praetervolavi fulgidi solis globum; 

Longeque sub pedibus deam 
Vidi triformem, dum coercebat suos 

Fraenis dracones aureis. 
Erraticorum siderum per ordines, 

Per lacteas vehor plagas, 6c 

Velocitatem saepe miratus novam, 

Donee nitentes ad fores 
Ventum est Olympi, et regiam crystalli- 
nam, et 

Stratum smaragdis atrium. 
Sed hie tacebo, nam quis effari queat 

Oriundus humano patre 
Amoenitates illius loci ? Mihi 

Sat est in aeternum frui." 



day from night. And these souls she leads 
before the face of the Sempiternal Father; 
but the souls of the impious she hurries 
away to the mournful realms of Hell, and 
the subterranean abodes. When I heard 
her voice calling me I rejoiced; straight- 
way I left my dark prison of flesh, and 
was borne in the midst of winged soldiery 
to the stars, as of old the aged prophet 
was rapt to heaven charioted in fire. The 
wain of bright Bootes, slow with cold, did 
not appall me, nor the arms of the fearful 
Scorpion, nor thy sword, Orion. I sped 
past the globe of the fulgid sun; far be- 
neath my feet I saw the tri-form goddess 
of the moon tugging at the golden reins of 
her dragons. Through the ranks of the 
erratic stars, and the milky stretches of 
space, I was borne, wondering at the novel 
speed of my flight, until I came to the glit- 
tering portals of Heaven, and the palace of 
crystal, and the courts paved with jasper 
and malachite. But here I will be silent, 
for who born of mortal father can tell the 
pleasures of that place ? It is enough for 
me to enjoy it forever." 



NATURAM NON PATI SENIUM 



THAT NATURE IS NOT SUBJECT TO OLD AGE 



It is probable, from a letter written by Mil- 
ton to Alexander Gill, his former master at 
St. Paul's School, that this piece was composed 
to oblige a Fellow of Christ's College, who was 
called upon to furnish some verse of the kind 
for the commencement exercises of 1628. Mil- 
ton says : " A certain Fellow of our college, who 
had to act as Respondent in the philosophical 
disputation at this Commencement, chanced to 
entrust to my puerility the composition of the 
verses required by the annual custom to be writ- 
ten on the questions in dispute, being - himself 
already long past the age for trifles of that 
sort, and more intent on serious things." The 
" Respondent in the philosophical disputation " 
was a person chosen from among the candidates 
for the Master's degree, to uphold a given 

Heu ! quam perpetuis erroribus acta fatis- 

cit 
Avia mens hominum, tenebrisque immersa 

profundis 



thesis, and defend it against the attacks of two 
Opponents, similarly chosen. He was required 
to furnish a kind of poetical illustration of his 
thesis, to be distributed among the audience 
before the disputation began. The question 
here dealt with, that of the ultimate decay or 
eternal youthfulness of Nature, was a popular 
one in the seventeenth century, philosophic 
thought being about equally divided upon it. 
Milton's verses are a vigorous poetic protest 
against the theory of degeneracy, conceived 
with a fervor of conviction and a strength of 
imagery which gives the trifle a permanent 
significance. Milton was at the end of his 
fourth academic year at the time of writing, 
and hence in the twentieth year of his age. 

Ah, how man's roving mind is driven 
and wearied by perpetual error, involved 
in profound shade and night such as blind 



35 6 



LATIN POEMS 



CEdipodioniarn volvit sub pectore noctem! 
Quae vesana suis metiri facta deorum 
Audet, et incisas leges adamante perenni 
Assimilare suis, nulloque solubile sseclo 
Consilium Fati perituris alligat horis. 
Ergone marcescet sulcantibus obsita 

rugis 
Naturae facies, et re rum publica Mater, 
Omniparum contracta uterum, sterilescet 

ab sevo ? 10 

Et, se fassa senem, male certis passibus 

ibit 
Sidereum tremebunda caput ? Nuin tetra 

vetustas 
Annorumque seterna fames, squalorque 

situsque, 
Sidera vexabunt? An et insatiabile Tem- 

pus 
Esuriet Caelum, rapietque in viscera pa- 

trem ? 
Heu ! potuitne suas imprudens Jupiter 

arces 
Hoc contra munisse nefas, et Temporis isto 
Exemisse malo, gyrosque dedisse perennes? 
Ergo erit ut quandoque, sono dilapsa tre- 

mendo, 
Convexi tabulata ruant, atque obvius ictu 
Stridat uterque polus, superaque ut Olym- 

pius aula 21 

Decidat, horribilisque retecta Gorgone 

Pallas; 
Qualis in iEgaeam proles Junonia Lemnon 
Deturbata sacro cecidit de limine cseli. 
Tu quoque, Phcebe, tui casus imitabere nati 
Prsecipiti curru, subitaque ferere ruina 
Pronus, et extincta fumabit lampade Ne- 

reus, 
Et dabit attonito feralia sibila ponto. 
Tunc etiam aerei divulsis sedibus Hsemi 
Dissultabit apex, imoque allisa barathro 30 
Terrebunt Stygium dejecta CerauniaDitem, 
In superos quibus usus erat, fraternaque 

bella. 
At Pater Omnipotens, fundatis fortius 

astris, 
Consuluit rerum summae, certoque peregit 
Pondere Fatorum lances, atque ordine 

summo 
Singula perpetuum jussit servare tenorem. 
Volvitur hinc lapsu Mundi rota prima 

diurno, 
Raptat et ambitos socia vertigine cselos. 
Tardior baud solito Saturnus, et acer ut 

olim 
Fulmineum rutilat cristata casside Mavors. 



(Edipus knew ! Foolishly he measures the 
lives of the gods by his own, to his own 
laws he likens those laws graven on eternal 
adamant ; and the will of Fate, never to be 
changed or undone, he links with his own 
perishable days. Shall the face of Nature 
wither, and be furrowed with wrinkles ? 
Shall the universal Mother grow sterile 
with age, and shall her womb cease to 
bring forth ? Shall she go stricken with 
eld, her steps uncertain, her starry head 
palsied ? Shall the darkness of age, and 
stiffness, and wasting, and the eternal fam- 
ine of the years, vex the stars ? Shall 
insatiable Time eat up the sky and devour 
his own father ? Alas, could not improvi- 
dent Jove have warded off this evil from 
the orbs of Heaven, made them exempt 
from this sickness of Time, and given them 
perpetual revolutions ? 'T is true, then, that 
a day will come when with fearful sound 
the floor of Heaven shall be broken up, 
when either pole shall shriek against the 
stroke, as Olympian Jove falls from his 
supernal dwelling, and Pallas, with the 
Gorgon uncovered on her shield; even as 
Vulcan, thrown from Heaven's brink, fell 
in iEgean Lemnos. Thou too, O Sun-god, 
shalt fall headlong from thy chariot, as 
thy Phaeton fell, borne down in sudden 
ruin, and with thy quenched lamp the 
astonished ocean shall smoke and hiss 
fiercely. Then, torn from its foundation, 
the summit of Mt. Hsemus shall topple 
down ; the Ceraunian mountains once used 
as missiles in the fratricidal wars of the gods 
shall crash into the lowest gulf, and terrify 
Stygian Dis. 

Nay, not so. The omnipotent Father, 
consulting on the sum of things, has more 
strongly established the stars. The scales 
of Fate He has balanced with surer weights. 
He has commanded all things in the great 
order to preserve unendingly their even 
way. Wherefore, the first wheel of the 
Universe, [the Primum Mobile,] rolls diur- 
nal, and communicates its dizzy motion to 
the spheres within. Saturn goes no slower 
than his wont, and eager as of old ful- 
minates red-crested Mars. Florid Phcebus 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



357 



Floridus aeternum Phoebus juvenile corus- 
cat, 41 

Nee fovet effcetas loca per declivia terras 
Devexo temone Deus; sed semper, arnica 
Luce potens, eadem currit per signa rota- 
rum. 
Surgit odoratis pariter formosus ab Indis 
iEthereum pecus albenti qui cogit Olympo, 
Mane vocans, et serus agens in pascua cseli; 
Temporis et gemino dispertit regna colore. 
Fulget, obitque vices alterno Delia cornu, 
Caeruleumque ignem paribus complectitur 
ulnis. 50 

Nee variant elementa fidem, solitoque 

fragore 
Lurida perculsas jaculantur fulmina rupes. 
Nee per inane furit leviori murmure Cau- 

rus; 
Stringit et armif eros a3quali horrore Gelonos 
Trux Aquilo, spiratque hiemem, nimbosque 

volutat. 
Utque solet, Siculi diverberat ima Pelori 
Rex maris, et rauca circumstrepit sequora 

concha 
Oceani Tubicen, nee vasta mole minorem 
iEgaeona ferunt dorso Balearica cete. 
Sed neque, Terra, tibi ssecli vigor ille 
vetusti 60 

Priscus abest; servatque suum Narcissus 

odorem ; 
Et puer ille suum tenet, et puer ille, de- 
core m, 
Phoebe, tuusque, et, Cypri, tuns; nee ditior 

olim 
Terra datum sceleri celavit montibus aurum 
Conscia, vel sub aquis gemmas. Sic deni- 

que in aevum 
Ibit cunctarum series justissima rerum; 
Donee flamma orbem populabitur ultima, 

late 
Circumplexa polos et vasti culmina cseli, 
Ingentique rogo flagrabit machina Mundi. 



shines ever young, nor does he deflect his 
team down declivities of sky to warm aban- 
doned places of the earth; but always 
through the same zodiacal signs he goes 
charioting, strong with friendly light. The 
morning and the evening star rise lovely 
as of yore from the odorous East, shepherd- 
ing their ethereal flocks on the blanching 
plains of heaven; in the morning they call 
home the stars, in the evening lead them 
out to pasture; disparting the realms of time 
with twin variety of light. As of old the 
moon shines through her changing phases, 
clasping with the same arms her cerulean 
fire. The elements, too, keep faith. With 
the same old crash the lurid lightning 
smites the cliffs. With undiminished roar 
the northwest wind rages through the void, 
and the northeast wind flings its same 
horror of snow and storm against the Scy- 
thian tribes. The Sea-king still shakes the 
bases of Sicilian Pelorus; the trumpeter of 
ocean still sounds his hoarse conch over the 
waters. With the same vast weight giant 
iEgseon bestrides the back of the Balearic 
whale. Nor from thee, Earth, does thy 
ancient vigor fade. The narcissus keeps 
its odor; the flower of thy boy, O Apollo, 
is still beautiful, and of thine, Aphrodite. 
Rich as of old and conscious of her riches, 
Earth still hides the sinful gold in her moun- 
tains, and the gems beneath her waves. 

So forever the just round of things shall 
go, until the last conflagration lays all waste, 
envelopes the poles, and wraps the summits 
of the mighty sky, and as on a huge pyre 
blazes the frame of the world. 



DE IDEA PLATONICA QUEMADMODUM ARISTOTELES 
INTELLEXIT 

ON THE PLATONIC IDEA AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD BY ARIS- 
TOTLE 



This is probably also an academic exercise, 
written on some occasion similar to the fore- 
going-. It is an attempt to burlesque Aristo- 
tle's interpretation, too rigid and physical, of 
the Platonic doctrine of Ideas or Archetypes. 
Milton speaks not in his own person, but in the 



person of a literal-minded Aristotelian, who de- 
mands loudly to know where the Archetype 
of man can be found, in the heavens above or 
the earth beneath. The manner of refutation 
here adopted is unexpectedly genial and hu- 
morous. 



358 



LATIN POEMS 



Dicite, sacrorum prsesides nemorum dese, 
Tuque O noveni perbeata numinis 
Memoria mater, quseque in immenso procul 
Antro recumbis otiosa iEternitas, 
Monumenta servans, et ratas leges Jovis, 
Cselique fastos atque ephemeridas Deum, 
Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine 
Natura solers finxit humanum genus, 
JEternus, incorruptus, sequsevus polo, 
Unusque et universus, exemplar Dei ? 10 
Haud ille, Falladis gemellus innubse, 
Interna proles insidet menti Jovis; 
Sed, quamlibet natura sit communior, 
Tamen seorsus extat ad morem unius, 
Et, mira ! certo stringitur spatio loci: 
Seu sempiternus ille siderum comes 
Cseli pererrat ordines decemplicis, 
Citimumve terris incolit Lunse globum; 
Sive, inter animas corpus adituras sedens, 
Obliviosas torpet ad Lethes aquas; 20 

Sive in remota forte terrarum plaga 
Incedit ingens hominis archetypus gigas, 
Et diis tremendus erigit celsum caput, 
Atlante major portitore siderum. 
Non, cui profundu m csecitas lumen dedit, 
Dircseus augur vidit hunc alto sinu; 
Non hunc silenti nocte Pleiones nepos 
Vatum sagaci prsepes ostendit choro; 
Non hunc sacerdos novit Assyrius, licet 
Longos vetusti commemoret atavos Nini, 30 
Priscumque Belon, inclytumque Osiridem; 
Non ille trino gloriosus nomine 
Ter magnus Hermes (ut sit arcani sciens) 
Talem reliquit Isidis cultoribus. 
At tu, perenne ruris Academi decus, 
(Hsec monstra si tu primus induxti seholis) 
Jam jam poetas, urbis exules tuse, 
Revocabis, ipse fabulator maximus; 
Aut institutor ipse migrabis foras. 



Ye goddesses who guard the sacred 
grove; and thou, O Memory, happy mother 
of the nine-fold deity; and Eternity, lazily 
recumbent far - off in thy great cavern, 
guarding the laws and ordinances of Jove 
and keeping the chronicles and feast-calen- 
dars of Heaven, — tell me, where is that 
first Being, eternal, incorruptible, coeval 
with the sky, that one and universal Being, 
exemplar of God, after whose image cun- 
ning nature patterned human kind ? It 
surely does not lurk unborn in the brain 
of Jove, a twin to Pallas. Though its na- 
ture is common to many, yet, wonderful 
to tell, it exists apart after the manner of 
an individual, and has a local habitation. 
Perchance as comrade to the sempiternal 
stars it wanders through the ten spheres of 
heaven, and inhabits the globe of the Moon, 
nearest to earth. Perchance it sits drows- 
ing by the waters of Lethe, among the 
spirits that wait to enter some living body 
and be born. Or in some remote region 
of the world does this Archetype of man 
walk about as a huge giant, lifting' its high 
head to frighten the gods, taller than Atlas 
the star-bearer ? No, the bard Tiresias, to 
whom blindness gave but added depth of 
vision, never saw it in his dreams. Winged 
Mercury never showed it to the wise band 
of seers, as he taught them in the sileut 
night. The Assyrian priest, though he 
knew the lore of those who begat ancient 
Ninus, knew old Belus and renowned Osi- 
ris, never heard of such a creature. Not 
even Hermes Trismegistus, trine and glori- 
ous name, though he knew many secret 
things, told aught of this thing to the wor- 
shipers of Isis. 

Ah, Plato, unfading glory of the Aca- 
deme, if you were the first to bring such 
monsters as this into the schools, you really 
ought to call back the poets whom you 
exiled from your republic, for you are the 
greatest fabler of them all. Bring them 
in, or else you, the founder, must go out ! 



AD PATREM 
TO MY FATHER 



This poem was written, as appears from in- 
ternal evidence, at Horton, probably soon after 
Milton went there from Cambridge, at the 
close of his seven years of academic life. His 



position at that time was peculiar. His father 
had given him every advantage of education 
procurable, not only in the way of regular 
schooling, but also in the way of elegant ac- 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



359 



complishments. To this had been added the 
stimulus of personal advice and encouragement 
in the prosecution of those large plans of self- 
improvement which Milton early laid out for 
himself. It was natural for the father to ex- 
pect, therefore, that his son would now put 
this elaborate education to some practical use 
in adopting one of the professions. When 
Milton rejected the ministry, and settled down 
at Horton with no more definite programme 
than to make a poet of himself, the good scrive- 
ner, in spite of his own liberal tastes, may well 
have been puzzled, or even moved to remon- 

Nunc mea Pierios cupiam per pectora 

fontes 
Irriguas torquere vias, totumque per ora 
Volvere laxatum gemino de vertice rivum; 
Ut, tenues oblita sonos, audacibus alis 
Surgat in officium venerandi Musa parentis. 
Hoc utcunqne tibi gratum, pater optime, 

carmen 
Exiguum meditatur opus; nee novimus ipsi 
Aptius a nobis quae possint munera donis 
Respondere tuis, quamvis nee maxima pos- 
sint 9 
Respondere tuis, nedum ut par gratia donis 
Esse queat vacuis quae redditur arida 

verbis. 
Sed tamen bsec nostros ostendit pagina 

census, 
Et quod habemus opum charta numeravi- 

mus ista, 
Quse mihi sunt nullse, nisi quas dedit aurea 

Clio, 
Quas mihi semoto somni peperere sub antro, 
Et nemoris laureta sacri, Parnassides um- 
brae. 
Nee tu, vatis opus, divinum despice car- 
men, 
Quo nihil sethereos ortus et semina caeli, 
Nil magis humanam commendat origine 
mentem, 19 

Sancta Promethese retinens vestigia flammse. 
Carmen amant Superi, tremebundaque Tar- 

tara carmen 
Ima ciere valet, divosque ligare profundos, 
Et triplici duros Manes adamante coercet. 
Carmine sepositi retegunt arcana futuri 
Phcebades, et tremulse pallentes ora Sibylhe; 
Carmina sacrificus sollennes pangit ad aras, 
Aurea seu sternit motantem cornua taurum, 
Seu cum fata sagax fumautibus abdita 

fibris 
Consulit, et tepidis Parcam scrutatur in 
extis. 



strate. This poem is at once an earnest avowal 
of indebtedness and an eloquent plea for the 
right to continue in the service of song. A 
very persuasive turn is given to the plea by 
the poet's declaration that the whole course of 
his father's conduct towards him has tended to 
develop in him the longing for high ideal aims ; 
and that, moreover, his father's love of musical 
composition is only another form of the Muse's 
service. Milton's intellectual pride and exult- 
ant sense of power comes out strikingly as the 
poem draws toward its close. 



Now may the Pierian fountains pour 
their waters through my heart, and the 
stream that falls from the twin peaks of 
Parnassus roll all its flood upon my lips. 
My Muse will put by her trivial strain, and 
rise on audacious wings to praise the par- 
ent whom I venerate. I know not how 
welcome, best of fathers, this song will be, 
this slender work that I meditate for you; 
but I know no better gift with which to 
repay your gifts. Gifts the greatest would 
be too little to repay you, much less can 
the mere arid return of words hope to equal 
your kindness. But still this page can set 
forth my account; on this sheet I have 
summed up my wealth, which is nothing 
except what golden Clio gave me, and what 
dreams have brought me in sequestered 
caverns, and the laurels of the sacred wood, 
and the shady places of Parnassus. 

Do not, my father, hold in disesteem the 
work of the bard, divine Song, than which 
nothing more clearly shows man's ethereal 
beginning, and heavenly seed, and the high 
origin of his mind. For in song linger holy 
traces of that fire which Prometheus stole. 
The gods love song. It has strength to 
compel the appalling deeps of Tartarus, 
to bind the lower gods, and chain the cruel 
shades with triple adamant. In song Apol- 
lo's priestesses reveal the secrets of the 
distant future, and with song the pale 
mouths of the Sibyls tremble. The sacri- 
ficer makes verse before the solemn altars, 
when he strikes the tossing head of the 
bull between its gilded horns, when he con- 
sults the destinies hidden in the fuming 
flesh, and reads fate from the entrails still 



3 6 ° 



LATIN POEMS 



Nos etiam, patrium tunc cum repetemus 

Olympum, 30 

iEternseque morse stabunt immobilis sevi, 
Ibimus auratis per cseli templa corouis, 
Dulciasuaviloquo sociantes carmina plectro, 
Astra quibus geminique poli convexa sona- 

bunt. 
Spiritus et rapidos qui circinat igneus orbes 
Nunc quoque sidereis intercinit ipse choreis 
Immortale melos et inenarrabile carmen, 
Torrida dum rutilus compescit sibila Ser- 
pens, 
Demissoque ferox gladio mansuescit Orion, 
Stellarum nee sentit onus Maurusius 

Atlas. 40 

Carmina regales epulas ornare solebant, 
Cum nondum luxus, vastseque immensa 

vorago 
Nota gulae, et modico spumabat ccena Lyaeo. 
Turn de more sedens festa ad convivia vates, 
iEsculea intonsos redimitus abarbore crines, 
Heroumque actus imitandaque gesta cane- 
bat, 
Et Chaos, et positi late fundamina Mundi, 
Reptantesque deos, et alentes numina glan- 

des, 
Et nondum iEtnseo qusesituni fulmen ab 

antro. 
Denique quid vocis modulamen inane juva- 

bit, 50 

Verborum sensusque vacans, numerique 

loquacis ? 
Silvestres decet iste choros, non Orphea, 

cantus, 
Qui tenuit fluvios, et quercubus addidit 

aures, 
Carmine, non cithara, simulacraque functa 

canendo 
Compulit in lacrymas: habet has a carmine 

laudes. 
Nee tu perge, precor, sacras contemnere 

Musas, 
Nee vanas inopesque puta, quarum ipse 

peritus 
Munere mille sonos numeros componis ad 

aptos, 
Millibus et vocem modulis variare canoram 
Doctus Arionii merit5 sis nominis hseres. 60 
Nunc tibi quid mirum si me genuisse poe- 

tam 
Contigerit, charo si tarn prope sanguine 

juncti 
Cognatas artes studiumque affine sequa- 

mur ? 
Ipse volens Phoebus se dispertire duobus, 



warm with life. We too, when we return 
to our native Heaven, and when the change- 
less eras of eternity are ours, shall go 
through the skyey temples crowned with 
gold, matching sweet hymns to the soft 
beat of the plectrum; the stars and the 
deeps of the twin poles shall ring with 
them. Then that fiery Spirit who flies 
round the swift orbs, himself shall sing 
amid the starry chorus an immortal mel- 
ody, a song ineffable, while the ruddy ser- 
pent-constellation Ophiucus stills his hot 
hissing, and fierce Orion lowers his sword, 
and Atlas feels no longer the weight of the 
stars. 

Poetry was wont to adorn the feasts of 
kings, in the old days when luxury and 
gluttony were not yet known, but when the 
table sparkled with seemly and moderate 
wine. Then, according to the good custom, 
the bard, seated at the convivial board, his 
unshorn locks bound with oak-leaves, used 
to chant the exploits of heroes and their 
emulable deeds; and Chaos, and the broad- 
laid foundations of the world; and the in- 
fant gods crawling to find their acorn food; 
and the thunderbolt not yet brought from 
the cavern of ./Etna. And what does mere 
music avail without words, tune vacant of 
sense and eloquent numbers ? That will 
do for the sylvan chorus of the birds, but 
not for Orpheus; 'twas with his singing 
voice, not with the sound of his cithara, 
that he held back rivers, gave ears to the 
oaks, and drove the ghosts of the dead to 
tears. From song he has the praise for 
these marvels. 

Do not, father, I pray, go on contemning 
the sacred Muses. Do not think them vain 
and poor, by whose grace you yourself are 
skilled to fit a thousand sounds to tune and 
rhythm, and vary the clear voice of the 
singer through a thousand modulations. 
You are heir by right of knowledge to the 
name of Arion. If it has been my good 
chance to be born a poet, why should you 
think it strange that, close-joined as we 
are by the dear tie of blood, we pursue kin- 
dred arts and studies ? Phoebus wished to 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



36 



Altera dona mihi, dedit altera dona parenti; 
Dividuumque Deum, genitorque puerque, 

tenemus. 
Tu tarnen ut simules teneras odisse Ca- 

moenas, 
Non odisse reor. Neque enim, pater, ire 

jnbebas 
Qua via lata patet, qua pronior area lucri, 
Certaque condendi fulget spes aurea 

nummi; 70 

Nee rapis ad leges, male custoditaque 

gentis 
Jura, nee insulsis damnas clamoribus aures. 
Sed, magis excultam cupiens ditescere 

mentem, 
Me, procul urbano strepitu, secessibus altis 
Abductum, Aonise jucunda per otia ripae, 
Phcebaeo lateri comiteni sinis ire beatum. 
Gfficium chari taceo commune parentis; 
Me poscunt majora. Tuo, pater optime, 

. sumptu 
Cum mihi Romulese patuit facundia lin- 
guae, 
Et Latii veneres, et quae Jovis ora dece- 

bant 80 

Grandia magniloquis elata vocabula Graiis, 
Addere suasisti quos jactat Gallia flores, 
Et quam degeneri novus Italus ore loque- 

lam 
Fundit, barbaricos testatus voce tumultus, 
Quaeque Palsestinus loquitur mysteria vates. 
Denique quicquid habet caelum, subjecta- 

que caelo 
Terra parens, terraeque et cselo interfluus 

aer, 
Quicquid et unda tegit, politique agitabile 

marmor, 
Per te nosse licet, per te, si nosse libebit; 
Dimotaque venit spectanda Scientia nube, 90 
Nudaque conspicuos inclinat ad oscula 

vultus, 
Ni fugisse velim, ni sit libasse molestum. 
I nunc, confer opes, quisquis malesanus 

avitas 
Austriaci gazasPeriianaque regnapraeoptas. 
Quse potuit majora pater tribuisse, vel ipse 
Jupiter, excepto, donasset ut omnia, caelo ? 
Non potiora dedit, quamvis et tuta fuis- 

sent, 
Publica qui juveni commisit lumina nato, 
Atque Hyperionios currus, et fraena diei, 
Etcircum undantem radiataluce tiaram. 100 
Ergo ego, jam doctae pars quamlibet ima 

catervae, 
Victrices hederas inter laurosque sedebo; 



divide himself, and gave one half himself 
to me and the other half to you. Father 
and son, we share between us the god. 

But for all your pretence of hatred against 
poetry I do not believe that you hate it. 
For you did not command me, father, to 
go where the way lies open broad, and. 
lucre is easy to earn; where the hope of 
gain shines golden and sure. Nor did you 
drag me to the bar, to grope among laws 
ill-kept of the people, and to listen to the 
insipid clamor of pleaders. Nay, rather 
you wished to enrich still more my mind, 
already well-nurtured, and led me far 
from the city uproar into high retirement, 
and permitted me to enjoy happy leisure 
by the Aonian stream, and to walk a glad 
companion at Apollo's side. 

I will say nothing of the common love and 
duty due to a dear parent; your claims on 
me are higher. When, at your cost, dear 
father, I had mastered the tongue of Romu- 
lus and seen all the graces of it, and had 
learned the noble idiom of the magnilo- 
quent Greeks, fit for the great mouth of 
Jove himself, you persuaded me to add to 
these the flowers which France boasts; and 
the speech which the modern Italian pours 
from his degenerate lips, bearing witness 
in every accent of the barbarian tumults; 
and the language in which the singers of 
Palestine speak their mysteries. After- 
wards, whatever the sky holds, or mother 
earth under the sky, or the air of heaven 
between; whatever the wave hides, or the 
restless marble of the sea, — of all this 
through you I am enabled to learn, through 
you, if I care to learn. From the parted 
cloud comes Science, naked and lovely, 
and bends her entrancing face to my kisses; 
I neither wish to flee, nor deem it harmful 
to taste what is proffered. 

Go, gather wealth, ye dull minds that 
care for the old treasures of Austria, and 
of the Peruvian realm. What greater gift 
than learning could my father have given 
me, or Jove himself, unless he had given me 
his sky and all ? Not more potent, though 
more dangerous, was the gift which Jove 
gave to his son, — the mighty lights, and 
the chariot Hyperion drove, and the reins of 
day, and the tiara of undulating radiance. 
Therefore, since I am a part, though the 
humblest, of the gifted throng, I shall sit 
triumphant among ivy and laurel. I shall 



362 



LATIN POEMS 



Jamque nee obscurus populo miscebor in- 
erti, 

Vitabuntque oculos vestigia nostra profanos. 

Este procul vigiles Cura3, procul este Que- 
rela?, 

Invidiaeque acies transverso tortilis hirquo; 

Sseva nee anguiferos extende, Calumnia, 
rictus ; 

In me triste nihil, fcedissima turba, potes- 
tis, 

Nee vestri sura juris ego; securaque tutus 

Pectora vipereo gradiar sublimis ab ictu. 1 10 
At tibi, chare pater, postquam non sequa 
merenti 

Posse referre datur, nee dona rependere 
factis, 

Sit inemorasse satis, repetitaque munera 
grato 

Percensere animo, fidseque reponere menti. 
Et vos, O nostri, juvenilia carmina, lusus, 

Si mod5 perpetuos sperare audebitis annos, 

Et domini superesse rogo, lucemque tueri, 

Nee spisso rapient oblivia nigra sub Oreo, 

Forsitan has laudes, decantatumque paren- 
tis 

Nomen, ad exemplum, sero servabitis 
sevo. 120 



not mix obscurely with the dull rabble; my 
footsteps shall be far from profane eyes. 
Let wakeful Care avaunt, and Complaint, 
and Envy with her crooked leer. Fierce 
Calumny, open not thy poisonous jaws ! 
Varlets, ye have no power of evil over 
me; I am not under your law. With se- 
cure breast I walk, lifted high above your 
viper stroke. 

But as for you, dear father, since it is 
not granted me to render justice to your 
desert, or equal your gifts with my deeds, 
let it suffice that I remember, that in all 
gratitude I count over my blessings, and 
hold them faithfully in mind. 

And ye, my boyish verses, pastime of 
my youth, perchance if ye dare to hope for 
immortality, dare to look upon the light 
after your master is dead, and are not 
snatched away to crowded Orcus and its 
dark oblivion, perchance these praises which 
I sing in the name of my father may fur- 
nish fathers in future ages with an exam- 
ple. 



AD SALSILLUM, POETAM ROMANUM, ^GROTANTEM. SCAZONTES 
TO SALSILLO, A ROMAN POET, IN HIS ILLNESS. SCAZONS 



The person addressed in these verses, Gio- 
vanni Salzilli, Milton probably met in Rome. 
His poetry has long- been forgotten. He was 
a member of the literary society called L'Aca- 
demia dei Fantastici, or Academy of the Fan- 
tastics ; and his poems were mostly written as 
contributions to this club. That he was one of 
Milton's Roman acquaintances we should know, 
without the testimony of the present composi- 

O Musa gressum quse volens trahis 

claudum, 
Vulcanioque tarda gaudes incessu, 
Nee sentis illud in loco minus gratum 
Quam cum decentes flava Deiope suras 
Alternat aureum ante Junonis Tectum, 
Adesdum, et haec s'is verba pauca Sal- 

sillo 
Refer, Camcena nostra cui tantum est cordi, 
Quamque ille magnis prsetulit immerito 

divis. 



tion, by his commendatory verses prefixed to 
the Latin poems. These verses are in the usual 
fulsome strain, exalting Milton above Homer, 
Virgil, and Tasso. In the opening lines, Mil- 
ton alludes jestingly to the kind of metre he 
has chosen to use, — scazons, or " limping 
measure," in which a spondee or trochee is in- 
serted instead of the expected iambus in the 
last foot of each line. 

O Muse, who hast elected to drag a club- 
foot after thee, who rejoicest to go slowly 
limping like Vulcan, and esteemest thyself 
no less engaging so than is blonde-haired 
Deiope when she moves her trim ankles in 
the dance before the golden couch of Juno, 
— come, prithee, and bear these few words 
to Salsillo, who is so partial to my poetry 
that he puts me, all unworthy as I am, be- 
fore the divine singers of old. Say that 
the man whom he praises sends him these 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



363 



Hsec ergo alumnus ille Londini Milto, 
Diebus hisce qui suum linquens niduni 10 
Polique tractum (pessiraus ubi ventoruni, 
Insanientis impotensque pulmonis, 
Pernix anhela sub Jove exercet flabra) 
Venit feraces Itali soli ad glebas, 
Visum superba cognitas urbes fama, 
Virosque, doctaeque indolem juventutis, 
Tibi optat idem hie fausta multa, Sal- 

sille, 
Habitumque fesso corpori penitus sanum; 
Cui nunc profunda bilis infestat renes, 
Praecordiisque fixa damnosiim spirat; 20 
Nee id pepercit impia qu6d tu Romano 
Tarn cultus ore Lesbium condis melos. 
O dulce divum munus, O Salus, Hebes 
Germana ! Tuque, Phoebe ! morborum 

terror, 
Pythone cseso, sive tu magis Paean 
Libenter audis, hie tuns sacerdos est. 
Querceta Fauni, vosque rore vinoso 
Colles benigni, mitis Evandri sedes, 
Siquid salubre vallibus frondet vestris, 
Levamen aegro ferte certatim vati. 30 

Sic ille charis redditus rursum Musis 
Vicina dulci prata mulcebit cantu. 
Ipse inter atros emirabitur lucos 
Nuraa, ubi beatum degit otium aeternum, 
Suam reclivis semper iEgeriam spectans; 
Tumidusque et ipse Tibris, hinc delinitus, 
Spei favebit annuse colonorum; 
Nee in sepulchris ibit obsessum reges, 
Nimium sinistro laxus irruens loro; 
Sed fraena melius temperabit undarum, 40 
Adusque curvi salsa regna Portumni. 



verses; London-bred Milton, who a while 
ago left his nest and his accustomed tract of 
sky, where the worst of winds pants perdi- 
tion from unhealthy lungs, and came to the 
fruitful glebe of Italy, to see its proud cities, 
its noble men, and its gifted youth. Now 
he sends thee greeting, Salsillo, and much 
health to thy afflicted body. Evil bile in- 
fests thy reins, and spreads sickness through 
thy organs; it is too impious to spare thee, 
for all the polished Lesbian song that thou 
pourest from thy Roman mouth. 

O Health, sweetest gift of the gods, sister 
of Hebe ! and thou Apollo, (or Psean, if 
thou lovest that name better), thou who 
didst slay Python and art a healer of sick- 
ness, behold, this is a priest of thine ! O 
ye oaken groves of Faunus, and ye Roman 
hills gracious with the dew of the grape, 
ye seats of mild Evander, if any healing 
simple grows in your valleys, hasten, strive 
each to be first in bringing alleviation to 
your sick poet. Then, restored once more 
to the dear Muses, he will charm the near 
fields with sweet song. Numa himself, 
where he reclines under the dark trees in 
a blissful eternity of ease, and gazes for- 
ever at his Egeria, will wonder. Swollen 
Tiber, soothed by the music, will spare the 
crop on which the farmer has set his hope 
of the year. He will cease to rush on with 
lax and sinister rein, to overwhelm the 
very kings in their sepulchres; but he will 
temper his waves, till they reach the salt 
realms of Portumnus the harbor-god. 



MANSUS 

Joannes Baptista Mansus, Marchio Villensis, vir ingenii laude, turn literarum studio, nee non et bellica* vir- 
tute, apud ltalos clarus in primis est. Ad quern Torquati Tassi Dialogus extat de Amicitia scriptus ; erat 
enim Tassi amicissimus : ab quo etiam inter Campaniae principes celebratur, in illo poemate cui titulus 
Gerusalemme Conquistata, lib. 20. 

Fra cavaliere magnanimi e cortesi 

Risplende il Manso. . . . 

Is authorem, Neapoli commorantem, summa" benevolentia" prosecutus est, multaque ei detulit humanitatia 
officia. Ad hunc itaque hospes ille, antequam ab ea urbe discederet, ut ne ingratuin se ostenderet, hoc 
carmen misit. 

TO MANSO 



Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, is a man of the highest repute in Italy, for genius, scholarship, 
and military accomplishments. Torquato Tasso addressed to him his Dialogues on Friendship ; he was a 
dear friend of that poet, and is mentioned among the princes of his country in the poem entitled Gerusa- 
lemme Conquistata, book xx : — 

Fra cavaliere magnanimi, e cortesi, 

Risplende il Manso. 

During the present author's stay at Naples, he was indebted to this nobleman for many offices of kindness 
and courtesy. After leaving the city, therefore, he sent the following verses to his host, in token of grat- 
itude. 



3 6 4 



LATIN POEMS 



The above headnote, prefixed to the poem 
for the edition of 1645, leaves only a few addi- 
tional words of explanation to be given. Mil- 
ton owed his introduction to Manso, as he tells 
us in the Def ensio Secunda, to an eremite friar 
with whom he fell in on the way from Rome to 
Naples, in November, 1638. Born in 1561, the 
marquis was now verging 1 upon his eightieth 
year, and was one of the very few munificent 
private patrons of art and letters still alive 
in Italy. He had sheltered Tasso, in 1588, 
when the poet was wandering friendless and 
distracted over Italy, and published affection- 
ate personal memoirs of that poet after his 
death. He had stood in the same relation of 
friendship and helpfulness to Marini, upon 
whose shoulders Tasso' s mantle fell. At Ma- 
rini's death, in 1625, he had taken charge of 
his burial and erected a monument in his 
honor. A man so intimately connected with 
the glories of Italian poetry could not but be 
interesting to Milton. We have abundant evi- 
dence that the interest was returned. Milton 
himself says : " As long as I staid in Naples, 
I found him truly most friendly to me, he him- 
self acting as my guide through the different 
parts of the city and the palace of the viceroy, 
and coming himself more than once to my inn 
to visit me ; and at my going away he seri- 
ously excused himself to me in that, though he 
wished to have shown me greater attention, he 
had not been able to do so in that city, because 
I would not be more close in the matter of 
religion." The complimentary epigram which 
Manso gave to his young English guest and 
which the latter prefixed to his Latin poems. 



rather bluntly excludes his religious convic- 
tions from eulogy : " If, as thy mind, form, 
bearing, face, and morals, so also thy creed 
were, thou would'st be not an Angle but an 
angel." 

In the Epitaphium Damonis there is a de- 
scription of the wrought or painted cups which 
Manso gave his guest as a keepsake : — 

" I dreamed of showing thee the two cups 
which Manso gave me, — Manso, not the least 
glory of the Neapolitan shore. They are won- 
ders of art, even as the giver is wonderful. 
About them is wrought a double brede ; in the 
midst rolls the red sea, and spring scatters 
its odors ; along the far coasts of Araby the 
trees drop balsam. ... In another place is 
the mighty stretch of sky, where Olympus lies 
open to view." 

The poem to Manso is one of singular ele- 
gance, and occasionally of high beauty. Auto- 
biographically the most interesting passage is 
that in which the poet states his intention of 
writing an epic upon King Arthur ; by which 
announcement he makes a tacit claim to be in- 
cluded in the list of those poets whom Manso 
has befriended. The concluding passage, in 
which Milton longs for such a patron and 
friend as Manso had been to Tasso and Marini, 
is conceived in a strain of surprising humility 
and dependence, rising, however, at the end, 
into confident exultation. 

The exact date of the poem cannot be fixed. 
It was composed either in Italy, after Milton 
left Naples, or in England, soon after his re- 
turn. 



H^EC quoque, Manse, tuae meditantur car- 

mina laudi 
Pierides ; tibi, Manse, choro notissime 

Phoebi, 
Quandoquidem ille alium haud sequo est 

dignatus honore, 
Post Galli cineres, et Mecsenatis Hetrusci. 
Tu quoque, si nostra? tantum valet aura 

Camcense, 
Victrices hederas inter laurosque sedebis. 
Te pridem magno felix coneordia Tasso 
Junxit, et seternis inseripsit nomina chartis. 
Mox tibi dulciloquum non inscia Musa 

Marinum 
Tradidit; ille tuum dici se gaudet alum- 

num, io 

Dum canit Assyrios divum prolixus amores, 
Mollis et Ausonias stupefecit carmine nym- 

phas. 
Ille itidem moriens tibi soli debita vates 
Ossa, tibi soli, supremaque vota reliquit: 



These verses too, Manso, the Muses in- 
tend in praise of you, who are already so 
well-known to Apollo's choir, and honored 
by the god above any man since Gallus 
died and Tuscan Mecamas. If the breath 
of my song avails, you too shall sit trium- 
phant among the laurels and ivy. 

First, a happy friendship joined you with 
great Tasso, and wrote both your names on 
eternal scrolls. Next, the Muse, knowing 
your worth, gave to you sweet-tongued Ma- 
rini ; he rejoiced to be called your guest 
and debtor while he sang in copious strains 
the Assyrian loves of the gods, and en- 
thralled the Italian nymphs with his soft 
accents. When the poet died, he who had 
owed you his life gave into your care his 
bones and death-bed prayers. Your dear 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



365 



Nee Manes pietas tua cbara fefellit amici; 

Vidimus arridentem operoso ex sere poe- 
tam. 

Nee satis hoc visum est in utrumque, et nee 
pia cessant 

Officia in tumulo; cupis integros rapere 
Oreo, 

Qua potes, atque avidas Parcarum eludere 
leges: 

Amborum genus, et varia sub sorte perac- 
tam 20 

Describis vitam, moresque, et dona Mi- 
nervae; 

iEmulus illins Mycalen qui natus ad altam 

Rettulit iEolii vitam facundus Homeri. 

Ergo ego te, Cliiis et magni nomine Phcebi, 

Manse pater, jubeo longum salvere per 
sevum, 

Missus Hyperboreo juvenis peregrinus ab 
axe. 

Nee tu longinquam bonus aspernabere 
Musam, 

Qua3 nn per, gelida vix enutrita sub Arcto, 

Imprudens Italas ausa est volitare per 
urbes. 

Nos etiam in nostro modulantes flumine 
cygnos 30 

Credimus obscuras noctis sensisse per um- 
bras, 

Qua Thamesis late puris argenteus urnis 

Oceani glaucos perfundit gurgite crines; 

Quin et in has quondam pervenit Tityrus 
oras. 
Sed neque nos genus incultum, nee in- 
utile Phoebo, 

Qua plaga septeno mundi sulcata Trione 

Brumalem patitur longa sub nocte Bobten. 

Nos etiam colimus Phcebum, nos munera 
Phcebo, 

Flaventes spicas, et lutea mala canistris, 

Halantemque crocum (perhibet nisi vana 
vetustas) 40 

Misimus, et lectas Druidum de gente cho- 
reas. 

(Gens Druides antiqua, sacris operata de- 
orum, 

Heroum laudes imitandaque gesta cane- 
bant.) 

Hinc quoties festo cingunt altaria cantu 

Delo in herbosa Graise de more puellre, 

Carminibus lsetis memorant Corineida Loxo, 

Fatidicamque Upin, cum flavicoma Heca- 
erge, 

Nuda Caledonio variatas pectora fuco. 



piety was true even to the ghost of your 
friend, as that monument tells in which he 
still smiles at us from the wrought bronze. 
Even this did not satisfy you ; your kindly 
offices did not cease at the tomb. You 
longed to save both your poet friends from 
Orcus, and, so much as lay in you, to cheat 
the avid laws of the Parcse. And so you 
told the ancestry of both, their habits, their 
gifts of mind, the various fortune of their 
lives, — emulous of him who was born on 
high Mycale, fluent Herodotus, chronicler 
of ^Eolian Homer. Therefore, sire, in the 
name of Clio and of Phoebus, I, who come 
a wandering youth from the north, send you 
greeting and long life. You, who are so 
kind, will not scorn a stranger's Muse, she 
who, nourished sparely in the frozen north, 
lately dared a venturesome flight through 
the cities of Italy. 1 I too, methinks, have 
heard, through the obscure shades of night, 
the swans singing in my river at home, 
where Thames, bending above her argent 
urns, lets her glaucous locks stream wide 
into the ocean. What do I say ? did not 
Chaucer himself, our Tityrus, come once 
to these shores ? 

In truth, we who endure the long nights 
under wintry Bootes, in that region of the 
world which is wheeled over by the seven- 
fold Wain, are no untaught race, useless to 
Apollo. We, too, worship him ; of old we 
sent him gifts to his own island, borne by 
a chosen band of Druids, an ancient race, 
skilled in the sacred rites of the gods, and 
singers of the noble deeds of heroes. We 
sent him yellowing ears of grain, and bas- 
kets of golden apples, and odorous crocus- 
flowers, though perchance these lost their 
fragrance on the long journey. Often, in 
memory of this pilgrimage, the Greek girls 
circle the altars in grassy Delos, as is their 
gracious wont, and in glad songs commemo- 
rate Loxo, daughter of Corineus, and pro- 
phetic Upis, and Hecaerge of the yellow 
hair, — Druid maids, whose nude breasts 
were stained with Caledonian woad. 

1 The reference is to the Latin verses contributed by 
Miltou to the Italian academies. 



3 66 



LATIN POEMS 



Fortunate senex ! ergo quacunque per 

orbem 
Torquati decus et nomen celebrabitur in- 

gens, _ 50 

Claraque perpetui succrescet fama Marini, 
Tu quoque in ora frequens venies plausum- 

que virorum, 
Et parili carpes iter immortale volatu. 
Dicetur turn sponte tuos habitasse penates 
Cynthius, et faniulas venisse ad limina 

Musas. 
At non sponte domum tamen idem et regis 

adivit 
Ilura Pheretiadse ceelo fugitivus Apollo, 
Ille licet magnum Alciden susceperat hos- 

pes; 
Tantum, ubi clamosos placuit vitare bubul- 

cos, 
Nobile mansueti cessit Cbironis in antrum, 
Irriguos inter saltus frondosaque tecta, 61 
Peneium prope rivum: ibi ssepe sub iliee 

nigra, 
Ad citharse strepitum, blanda prece victus 

amici, 
Exilii duros lenibat voce labores. 
Turn neque ripa suo, barathro nee fixa sub 

imo 
Saxa stetere loco; nutat Trachinia rupes, 
Nee seutit solitas, immania pondera, silvas; 
Emotseque suis properant de collibus orni, 
Mulcenturque novo maculosi carmine lyn- 

ces. 
Diis dilecte senex ! te Jupiter aequus opor- 

tet 70 

Nascentem et miti lustrarit lumine Phoebus, 
Atlantisque nepos; neque enim nisi charus 

ab ortu 
Diis superis poterit magno favisse poetse. 
Hinc longseva tibi lento sub flore senectus 
Vernat, et iEsonios lucratur vivida fusos, 
Nondum deciduos servans tibi frontis 

honores, 
Ingeniumque vigens, et adultum mentis 

acumen. 
O mihi si mea sors talem concedat amicum, 
Phcebseos decorasse viros qui tam bene 

norit, 
Siquando indigenas revocabo in carmina 

reges, 80 

Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moven- 

tem, 
Aut dicam invictae sociali fcedere mensae 
Magnanimos Heroas, et (O mod6 spiritus 

adsit) 



Fortunate old man ! wherever through 
the world the mighty name of Tasso is 
celebrated with honor, wherever the im- 
perishable fame of Marini spreads, you too 
shall be on the lips of men for praise ; you 
shall fly side by side with these poets on 
their immortal way. It shall be said that 
of his own accord Cynthian Apollo dwelt 
in your house, and that the Muses came as 
familiars to your threshold. When Apollo 
came a heavenly fugitive to the fields of 
King Admetus, it was not of his own free 
accord, though Admetus had been host to 
great Alcides. And when he wished to be 
rid for a while of the shouting plough- 
men, he went to the cave of the gentle 
centaur Chiron, amid irriguous slopes and 
roofs of shade, near to the river Peneius. 
Often there under the dark ilex, at his 
friends' request, he took his cythara and 
sang to lighten the harsh labors of his exile. 
Then neither the banks of the stream nor 
the rocks in the chasm stood quiet. The 
Trachinian cliff swayed, no longer feeling 
the mighty weight of its forests. The ash- 
trees from the mountains drew near, and 
the spotted lynxes, softened at the new 
song. 

Old man loved of the gods ! Surely 
Jupiter and Phoebus must have poured upon 
you mildest radiance at your birth; for no 
man, unless he were dear from his cradle 
to the gods above, could have had the for- 
tune to befriend a great poet. This is why 
your age keeps green like JEson's, and the 
late blossoms fade not from it ; this is why 
your head preserves so long its locks un- 
fallen, your nature its vigor, and your mind 
the keenness of its prime. Oh, if to me Fate 
ever gives such a friend, a man who knows 
so well how to honor the sons of Phoebus, 
I will some day recall in song the kings of 
my native land, and Arthur, who carried 
war even into fairyland. Or I shall tell 
of those great-hearted champions bound in 
the society of the Round Table, and (O 
may the spirit be in me !) I shall break 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



367 



Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte 

phalanges ! 
Tandem, ubi, non tacitae permensus tem- 
pera vitae, 
Annorumque satur, cineri sua jura relin- 

quam, 
Ille mihi lecto madidis astaret ocellis; 
Astanti sat erit si dicam, ' Sim tibi curae '; 
Ille meos artus, liventi morte solutos, 
Curaret parva componi molliter urna: 90 
Forsitan et nostros ducat de marmore vul- 

tus, 
Nectens aut Paphia myrti aut Parnasside 

lauri 
Fronde comas; et ego secura pace quies- 

cara. 
Turn quoque, si qua fides, si praemia certa 

bonorum, 
Ipse ego, caelicolum semotus in asthera 

divum, 
Qu5 labor et mens pura vehunt atque ignea 

virtus, 
Secreti haec aliqua mundi de parte videbo 
(Quantum fata sinunt), et tota mente sere- 

num 
Ridens purpureo suffundar lumine vultus, 
Et simul aethereo plaudam mihi laetus 

Olympo. 100 



the Saxon phalanxes with British war. 
Then, when I have lived the measure of my 
life, not in inglorious silence, and, sated 
with years, shall give the urn its rights, my 
patron will stand with wet eyes at my bed- 
side. As he stands there, I shall only say, 
"I am in thy care." He will place my 
limbs, loosened in death, softly in their 
humble grave ; and perhaps he will carve 
my face in marble, and bind my sculptured 
brows with Paphian myrtle or with the 
laurel of Parnassus, and I shall rest in 
peace. ,y Then, if faith means aught, if there 
is any reward for the righteous, I shall 
stand among the ethereal deities in Para- 
dise, whither labor, and a pure mind, and 
righteousness that burneth as a flame, carry 
the souls of men : from some corner of the 
secret world, the fates permitting, I shall 
look down and behold all this ; my soul 
shall smile, my serene face shall be suffused 
with purpureal light, and glad at heart I 
shall clap my hands in the air of Heaven. 



EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS 
ON THE DEATH OF DAMON 



Milton's intimacy with Charles Diodati con- 
tinued after they had both left college, and 
ripened into a friendship of a very pure and ex- 
alted kind, as is proved by the letters which 
passed between them, while one was at Horton 
and the other in the north of England engaged 
in the study of medicine. The Italian can- 
zone beginning " Diodati. e '1 te diro con mara- 
viglia," and the fact of Milton's pilgrimage to 
Lucca, the ancestral home of the Diodati fam- 
ily, show that his friend was still in his mind 
during- his sojourn abroad. He probably did 
not hear of his bereavement until he reached 
Geneva, in June, 1039, when Diodati had been 
dead almost a year, carried off, within a fort- 
night of his sister, apparently by some epi- 
demic which swept over that region of Black- 
friars where the two had taken lodgings. The 
elegy which follows was written, if we are to 
take literally the passage beginning " Twice 
the ear had grown green on the stalk," about 
two years after Diodati's death, i. e. in the 
autumn of 1640. 

Aside from the rare beauty and passion of 



the poem in its Latin form, it has much auto- 
biographic interest. The life which the two 
friends led together is treated in much more 
explicit detail than is the case in Lycidas, and 
without the fiction necessary there. Diodati's 
medical studies, their talks and walks in the 
country about Horton, Milton's own experiences 
in Italy and his poetic ambitions, all come in 
for a treatment which is unusually concrete 
in spite of the pastoral disguise. Of preemi- 
nent interest is the passage concerning the 
great epic poem on the legendary history of 
Britain which Milton has already under way, 
and his decision to write in English instead of 
Latin. It would be pleasant to know whether 
the shepherds and shepherdesses who figure in 
the threnody are actual friends of Milton and 
Diodati, disguised according to the pastoral 
convention ; in the case of Chloris " from the 
stream of Chelmer," at least, a real person 
seems to be indicated. For some discussion of 
the form and spirit of the poem, see the intro- 
duction to the Latin poems. 



3 68 



LATIN POEMS 



ARGUMENTUM 

Thyrsis et Damon, ejusdem viciniae pastores, eadem 
studia sequuti, a pueritia amici erant, ut qui pluri- 
mum. Thyrsis, animi causa 1 profectus, peregre de 
obitu Damonis nuncium accepit. Doraum postea 
reversus, et rem ita esse comperto, se suamque soli- 
tudinem hoc carmine deplorat. Damonis autem sub 
persona hie intelligitur Carolus Deodatus, ex urbe 
Hetruriae Luct paterno genere oriundus, caetera Ang- 
lus ; ingenio, doctrinS, clarissimisque caeteris virtuti- 
bus, dum viveret, juvenis egregius. 

Himerides Nymphse (nam vos et Daphnin 

et Hylan, 
Et plorata diu meministis fata Bionis), 
Dicite Sicelicuin Thamesina per oppida 

carmen: 
Quas miser effudit voces, quae murmura 

Thyrsis, 
Et qnibus assiduis exercuit antra querelis, 
Fluminaque, fontesque vagos, nemorumque 

recessus, 
Dum sibi prsereptuni queritur Damona, 

neque altam 
Luctibus exemit noctem, loca sola perer- 

rans. 
Et jam bis viridi surgebat culmus arista, 
Et totidem flavas numerabant horrea 

messes, 10 

Ex quo summa dies tulerat Damona sub 

umbras, 
Nee dum aderat Thyrsis; pastorem scilicet 

ilium 
Dulcis amor Musae Thusca retinebat in 

urbe. 
Ast ubi mens expleta domum pecorisque 

relicti 
Cura vocat, simul assueta seditque sub 

ulmo, 
Turn verb amissum, turn denique, sentit 

amicum, 
Ccepit et immensum sic exonerare dolo- 

rem: — 
" Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Hei mihi ! quae terris, quae dicam numina 

caelo, 
Postquam te immiti rapuerunt funere, 

Damon ? 20 

Siccine nos linquis ? tua sic sine nomine 

virtus 
Ibit, et obscuris numero sociabitur umbris? 
At non ille animas virga qui dividit aurea 
Ista velit, dignumque tui te ducat in agmen, 
Ignavumque procul pecus arceat omne 

silentum. 



ARGUMENT 

Thyrsis and Damon, shepherds dwelling in the same 
region and pursuing the same studies, were close friends 
from boyhood. Thyrsis, while travelling abroad for the 
improvement of his miud, receives news of Damon's 
death. Returning after a time and finding it true, he 
deplores himself and his solitude in the following poem. 
By Damon is to be understood Charles Diodati, con- 
nected through his father's family with the Tuscan city 
of Lucca ; in other respects an Englishman : a youth 
distinguished, during his short life, for unusual talents, 
learning, and virtue. 

Muse of Sicily's pastoral song, who long 
remembered Daphnis and Hylas and the 
tearful fate of Bion, repeat these Sicilian 
verses through the cities of Thames; these 
words which forlorn Thyrsis poured out 
in grief for Damon's taking-off. He filled 
the caves with his murmured complaint, the 
rivers, the springs, and the depths of the 
woods; deep into the night he prolonged 
his sobs, as he wandered in lonely ways. 
Twice now the ear had grown green on the 
stalk, and twice had the yellow harvests 
been gathered into barns, since the fatal 
day which bore Damon to the shades, and 
Thyrsis absent. For love of the sweet 
Muse kept that shepherd in the far-off city 
of Tuscany. But when a mind replete, 
and anxiety for the flock he had left be- 
hind, called him home, he sat down beneath 
the accustomed elm; and then, ah, then at 
last he felt the loss of his friend, and thus 
he sought to lighten his overwhelming grief 
in speech: — 

" Go to your folds unfed, my lambs; 
your master is troubled. Ah me ! what 
powers shall I name on earth or in heaven, 
now that cruel death has seized thee, Da- 
mon ? Dost thou leave us so ? Shall thy 
virtue thus go hence without a name, and 
be merged with shades obscure ? Ah, no; 
he who marshals dead souls with his golden 
wand, wills it not so; he will lead thee apart 
into a company worthy thy fellowship, and 
banish far off the base herd of the voice- 
less. 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



369 



" Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Quicquid erit, certe, nisi me lupus ante 

videbit, 
Indeplorato non comminuere sepulchro, 
Constabitque tuus tibi honos, longumque 

vigebit 
Inter pastores. Illi tibi vota secundo 30 
Solvere post Daphnin, post Daphnin dicere 

laudes, 
Gaudebunt, dum rura Pales, dum Faunus 

amabit; 
Si quid id est, priscamque fidem coluisse, 

piumque, 
Palladiasque artes, sociumque habuisse 

canorum. 
"Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Heec tibi certa manent, tibi erunt hsec 

prsemia, Damon. 
At mihi quid tandem fiet mod5 ? quis mihi 

fidus 
Haerebit lateri comes, ut tu ssepe solebas, 
Frigoribus duris, et per loca fceta pruinis, 
Aut rapido sub sole, siti morientibus 

herbis, 40 

Sive opus in magnos fuit eminus ire leones, 

Aut avidos terrere lupos prsesepibus altis ? 

Quis fando sopire diem cantuque solebit ? 

"Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Pectora cui credam ? quis me lenire doce- 

bit 
Mordaces curas, quis longam fallere noc- 

tem 
Dulcibus alloquiis, grato cum sibilat igni 
Molle pirum, et nucibus strepitat focus, at 

malus Auster 
Miscet cuncta foris, et desuper intonat 

ulmo? 
"Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 50 

Aut sestate, dies medio dum vertitur axe, 
Cum Pan sesculea somnum capit abditus 

umbra, 
Et repetunt sub aquis sibi nota sedilia 

Nymphee, 
Pastoresque latent, stertit sub sepe colonus, 
Quis mihi blanditiasque tuas, quis turn mihi 

risus, 
Cecropiosque sales referet, cultosque le- 

pores ? 
"Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
At jam solus agros, jam pascua solus oberro, 



"Go to your folds unfed, my lambs; 
your master is troubled. Be sure, what- 
ever comes, unless the wolf's eye brings me 
death too soon, thou shalt not crumble in 
the tomb unwept. Thy honors shall be es- 
tablished, and long be kept green among 
shepherds. To thee, next after Daphnis, 
they shall discharge their vows; of thee, 
next after Daphnis, they shall rejoice to 
speak praises, so long as Pales and Faunus 
love the fields, if it means aught for a man 
to have been faithful like them of old, and 
pious, and learned, and to have had a poet 
for his friend. 

"Go to your folds unfed, my lambs; 
your master is troubled. These rewards, 
Damon, are thine for certain. But me, 
what will become of me ? What faithful 
comrade will cling to my side, as thou 
didst, when through the bitter cold of the 
frost-filled country-sides we went to frighten 
the hungry wolves from the folds, or when 
we must needs go afar under the steep sun, 
where the herbs were dying of thirst, to 
hunt the great lions ? Who will solace my 
day with talk and with singing ? 

"Go to your folds unfed, my lambs; 
your master is troubled. In whose breast 
shall I put my trust ? Who will teach me 
to assuage my eating cares ? Who will cheat 
the long night with sweet converse, when 
the mellow pears hiss before the cheery 
fire, and nuts pop on the hearth, and out- 
side the wild wind makes chaos, storming 
through the elm-tops ? 

"Go to your folds unfed, my lambs; 
your master is troubled. Or in summer, 
when the sun is in the zenith at noon, when 
Pan slumbers deep-hidden in the oak-shade 
and the nymphs seek their cool nooks under 
the waters, when the shepherds are all 
quiet and the boor snores under the hedge, 
— who will bring me thy blandishments, 
thy laughter, thy wit, thy graceful learn- 
ing ? 

" Go to your folds unfed, my lambs ; 
your master is troubled. Now I wander 
alone through the fields and pastures, all 



37° 



LATIN POEMS 



Sicubi ramosae densantur vallibus umbrae; 
Hie serum expecto; supra caput imber et 

Eurus 60 

Triste sonant, fractaeque agitata crepuscula 

silvae. 
"Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Heu ! quam culta mihi prius arva procaci- 

bus herbis 
Involvuntur, et ipsa situ seges alta fatiscit ! 
Innuba neglecto marcescit et uva racemo, 
Nee myrteta juvant; ovium quoque taedet, 

at illae 
Mo3rent, inque suum convertunt ora magis- 

trum. 
"Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Tityrus ad corylos vocat, Alphesibceus ad 

ornos, 
Ad salices iEgon, ad flumina pulcher Amyn- 

tas : 70 

' Hie gelidi fontes, hie illita gramina musco, 
Hie Zephyri, hie placidas interstrepit arbu- 
tus undas.' 
Ista canunt surdo; frutices ego nactus abi- 

bam. 
"Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Mopsus ad haec, nam me redeuntem forte 

notarat 
(Et callebat avium linguas et sidera Mop- 
sus), 
' Thyrsi, quid hoc?' dixit; ' quae te coquit 

improbabilis ? 
Aut te perdit amor, aut te male fascinat 

astrum ; 79 

Saturni grave saepe fuit pastoribus astrum, 

Intimaque obliquo fig-it praecordia plumbo.' 

"Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Mirantur nymphae, et ' Quid te, Thyrsi, 

futurum est ? 
Quid tibi vis ? ' aiunt: 'non haec solet esse 

juventae 
Nubila frons, oculique truces, vultusque 

severi : 
Ilia choros, lususque leves, et semper amo- 

rem 
Jure petit; bis ille miser qui serus amavit.' 
"Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Venit Hyas, Dryopeque, et filia Baucidis 

JEgle, 
Docta modos, citharaeque sciens, sed per- 

dita fastu: 



alone now ; where the shadows of the 
branches thicken in the valley, I wait the 
evening; over my head the wind and the 
rain-cloud make a mourning sound, and 
the forest twilight is all astir with gleams 
and shadows. 

"Go to your folds unfed, my lambs ; 
your master is troubled. Alas, how my 
fields, once well -tended, are overgrown 
with weeds ! The high corn cracks open 
with blight; the grape-clusters hang with- 
ered, unmarried to the stalk. My myrtles 
do not thrive; my sheep sicken, and turn 
their mournful eyes upon their master. 

"Go to your folds unfed, my lambs; 
your master is troubled. Tityrus calls to 
the hazels, Alphesibceus to the ash-trees, 
iEgon to the willows; to the rivers beauti- 
ful Amy ntas calls : ' Here,' they cry, ' are 
cool fountains, here the sward is soft with 
moss, here are gentle winds, here the arbu- 
tus murmurs in the placid stream.' They 
sing to a deaf ear; I plunge into the bushes 
and leave them. 

"Go to your folds unfed, my lambs; 
your master is troubled. Mopsus chances 
to see me returning (skilled in the stars 
and in the speech of birds is Mopsus), and 
adds his voice to theirs. '' What ails thee, 
Thyrsis,' he sayv* what naughty flirt tor- 
ments thee ? Either love wastes thee, 
or some star has cast on thee a baleful 
charm : Saturn's star has oft been bitter to 
shepherds, and with his slant dart of lead 
has pierced their inmost hearts.' 

" Go to your folds unfed, my lambs; 
your master is troubled. The nymphs 
gaze at me astonished, and * Thyrsis,' they 
say, ' what is in store for thee ? what wilt 
thou ? This cloudy brow, these threaten- 
ing eyes, this gloomy face, — these belong 
not to youth. Youth cares for dancing 
and gaiety, and follows after love as its 
right; twice wretched is he who loves late.' 

"Go to your folds unfed, my lambs; 
your master is troubled. Hyas comes, and 
Dry ope ; iEgle comes, daughter of Baucis, 
skilled in numbers and the lyre, and deadly 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



37i 



Venit Idumanii Chloris vicina fluenti: 90 
Nil me blauditiae, nil me solantia verba, 
Nil me si quid adest movet, aut spes ulla 

futuri. 
" Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Hei mihi ! quam similes ludunt per prata 

juvenci, 
Omnes unanimi secum sibi lege sodales ! 
Nee magis hunc alio quisquam secernit 

amicum 
De grege; sic densi veniunt ad pabula 

thoes, 
Inque vicem hirsuti paribus junguntur ona- 
gri: 
Lex eadem pelagi; deserto in littore Proteus 
Agmina phocarum numerate vilisque volu- 

crum 100 

Passer habet semper quicum sit, et omnia 

circum 
Farra libens volitet, ser6 sua tecta revisens; 
Quern si sors letho objecit, seu milvus 

adunco 
Fata tulit rostro, seu stravit arundine fos- 

sor, 
Protinus ille alium socio petit inde volatu. 
Nos durum genus, et diris exercita fatis 
Gens, homines, aliena animis, et pectore 

discors; 
Vix sibi quisque parem de millibus invenit 

unum; 
Aut, si sors dederit tandem non aspera 

votis, 109 

Ilium inopina dies, qua non speraveris hora, 
Surripit, aeternum linquens in saecula dam- 
num. 
"Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Heu ! quis me ignotas traxit vagus error in 

oras 
Ire per aereas rupes, Alpemque nivosam ? 
Ecquid erat tanti Romam vidisse sepultam 
(Quamvis ilia foret, qualem dum viseret 

olim 
Tityrus ipse suas et oves et rura reliquit), 
Ut te tani dulci possem carnisse sodale, 
Possem tot maria alta, tot interponere 

montes, 
Tot silvas, tot saxa tibi, fluviosque so- 

nantes ? 120 

Ah ! certe extremum licuisset tangere dex- 

tram, 
Et bene compositos placide morientis ocel- 

los, 



proud withal; Chloris comes, from the 
stream of Chelmer: their blandishments, 
their soothing words, are nothing to me. 
Nothing in the present pleasures me, nor 
have I any hope for the future. 

"Go to your folds unfed, my lambs; 
your master is troubled. Ah me ! how 
like one another are the herds at sport in 
the fields, all companions under a single 
law! No one of them seeks out a separate 
friend from the herd. Even so the jackals 
come in crowds to feed, and in varying 
turn the shaggy zebras pair. The same law 
rules on the seas, where on the desert shore 
Proteus numbers his drove of sea-calves. 
Even the sparrow, humblest of birds, has 
always a mate, with whom he flies in happy 
freedom about the barns, returning late to 
the nest; yet, if this mate dies, or a curve- 
beaked falcon slays it, or the ditcher pierces 
it with his arrow, straight he flutters off 
to find another. But we men are a diffi- 
cult and bewildered race, alien mind from 
mind, heart from heart discordant. Hardly 
out of a thousand does a man find one con- 
genial spirit; or, if fate sends one in an- 
swer to our prayers, yet, in an hour when 
we least expect it, he is snatched from us, 
leaving eternal loss behind. 

" Go to your folds unfed, my lambs ; 
your master is troubled. Alas, what rest- 
less fancy drew me to foreign shores, across 
the skyey precipices of the snow-clad Alps ? 
What was there so precious in the sight of 
buried Rome (even if she had been as she 
was when Tityrus of old left his sheep and 
his fields to see her) that I could part from 
my sweet companion, could put between 
him and me so many mountains and for- 
ests, so many rocks and sounding rivers ? 
Ah, if I had stayed, I could at least have 
touched his hand at the last, closed his 



372 



LATIN POEMS 



Et dixisse ' Vale ! nostri memori bis ad 

astra.' 
"Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Quamquam etiam vestri nunquam memi- 

nisse pigebit, 
Pastores Thusci, Musis operata juventus, 
Hie Charis, atque Lepos; et Thuscus tu 

quoque Damon, 
Antiqua genus unde petis Lucumonis ab 

urbe. 
O ego quantus eram, gelidi cum stratus ad 

Arni 
Murmura, populeumque nemus, qua mol- 

lior herba, 130 

Carpere nunc violas, nunc summas carpere 

myrtos, 
Et potui Lycidse certantem audire Menal- 

cam ! 
Ipse etiam tentare ausus sum; nee puto 

multum 
Displicui; nam sunt et apud me munera 

vestra, 
Fiscelhe, calathique, et cerea vincla cicutse : 
Quin et nostra suas docuerunt nomina 



Et Datis et Francinus; erant et vocibus 

ambo 
Et studiis noti, Lydorum sanguinis ambo. 
" Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Hsec mihi turn lseto dictabat roscida luna, 140 
Dum solus teneros claudebam cratibus 

hcedos. 
Ah ! quoties dixi, cum te cinis ater habe- 

bat, 
' Nunc canit, aut lepori nunc tendit retia 

Damon ; 
Vimina nunc texit varios sibi quod sit in 

usus; ' 
Et quae turn facili sperabam mente fu- 

tura 
Arripui voto levis, et prsesentia finxi. 
' Heus bone ! numquid agis ? nisi te quid 

forte retardat, 
Imus, et arguta paulum recubamus in um- 
bra, 
Aut ad aquas Colni, aut ubi jugera Cassi- 

belauni ? 
Tu mihi percurres medicos, tua gramina, 

SUCCOS, 150 

Helleborumque, humilesque crocos, foli- 

umque hyacinthi, 
Quasque habet ista palus herbas, artesque 

medentum.' 



dying eyes, and said, ' Farewell, do not for- 
get me as thou goest to the stars.' 

" Go to your folds unfed, my lambs ; 
your master is troubled. Yet, for all, I 
shall never be weary of remembering you, 
Tuscan shepherds, youths devoted to the 
Muses; with you dwell Grace and Pleasant- 
ness. Thou, too, Damon, wert a Tuscan; 
thou tracest thy lineage from Lucca, an- 
cient city of Lucumon. Oh, how mighty 
was I, when I lay stretched by cool mur- 
muring Arno, where the poplar grove 
softens the herbage ! There I might pluck 
violets now, and now sprigs of myrtle, 
while I listened to Menalcas contending 
with Lycidas in song. I myself dared to 
enter the strife, and I think I did not much 
displease; for I have the gifts you gave 
me in reward, — rush-baskets, and osier- 
plaits, and waxen reed-stops. Nay, Datis 
and Francinus, both of them famous schol- 
ars and singers, and both of Tuscan blood, 
taught my name in song to their native 
beeches. 

" Go to your folds unfed, my lambs ; 
your master is troubled. Such strains as 
these the red moon used to whisper to my 
glad ear while I was shutting my kids in 
the close. Ah, how many times I said, 
even when — though I knew it not — the 
urn held thy ashes, ' Now Damon is sing- 
ing, or setting traps for the hare. Now 
he is plaiting osiers for his various uses.' 
With easy mind I hoped, and lightly I 
fitted the future to my wish, picturing it 
all present before my eyes. * Heigh, 
friend,' I would say, * art thou busy ? If 
nothing is to hinder, shall we go lie and 
chat in the shade, by the waters of Colne f 
or on the heights of Cassebelaunus ? 2 Thou 
shalt tell over to me thy herbs and medi- 
cines, hellebore, and crocus, and hyacinth- 
leaf; thou shalt tell me what simples are 
to be found in such and such a pond, and 
reveal to me all the arts of healing. Ah, 
perish the simples ! Perish the arts of 

1 A river flowing past Horton. 

2 Near St. Albans, in Herts. 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



373 



Ah ! pereant herbse, pereant artesque me- 

dentum, 
Gramina, postquam ipsi nil profecere ma- 

gistro ! 
Ipse etiam — nam nescio quid mihi grande 

sonabat 
Fistula — ab undecima jam lux est altera 

nocte — 
Et turn forte novis admoram labra cicutis: 
Dissiluere tamen, rupta compage, nee ultra 
Ferre graves portuere sonos: dubito quoque 

ne sim 
Turgidulus; tamen et referam; vos cedite, 

sylvse. 160 

" Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Ipse ego Dardanias Rutupina per sequora 

puppes 
Dicam, et Pandrasidos regnum vetus Ino- 

genise, 
Brennumque Arviragumque duces, pris- 

cumque Belinum, 
Et tandem Armoricos Britonum sub lege 

colonos ; 
Turn gravidam Arturo fatali fraude Ioger- 

nen; 
Mendaces vultus, assumptaque Gorlois 

arma, 
Merlini dolus. O, mihi turn si vita super- 
sit, 
Tu procul annosa pendebis, fistula, pinu 
Multum oblita mihi, aut patriis mutata 

Camcenis 170 

Brittonicum strides ! Quid enim ? omnia 

non licet uni, 
Non sperasse uni licet omnia; mi satis 

ampla 
Merces, et mihi grande decus (sim ignotus 

in sevum 
Turn licet, externo penitusque inglorius 

orbi), 
Si me flava comas legat Usa, et potor 

Alauni, 
Vorticibusque frequens Abra, et nemus 

omne Treantse, 
Et Thamesis meus ante omnes, et fusca 

metallis 
Tamara, et extremis me discant Orcades 

undis. 
"Ite domum impasti; domino jam non 

vacat, agni. 
Haec tibi servabam lenta sub cortice lauri, 
Haec, et plura simul; turn quae mihi pocula 

Mansus, 181 

Mansus, Chalcidicre non ultima gloria ripse, 



healing ! They could not profit their mas- 
ter ! Medicine was thy loved pursuit, but I 
too — 't is eleven nights and a day now 
since I — ah, I know not what large strain 
my pipe was trying to sound — I was ac- 
customing my lips to new reeds perhaps: 
suddenly the fastening burst; the reeds Hew 
asunder, unable to endure longer the grave 
sounds to which I racked them. I know 
not — perhaps I am over-bold; still, I will 
tell about it. Give way, my pastoral song, 
to a sterner theme. 

" Go to your folds unfed, my lambs ; your 
master is troubled. I am about to sing of 
the Trojan ships that passed along our 
Kentish coast, and the old realm of Itnogene, 
Brut's wife, and the ancient chiefs Brennus 
and Arviragus and Belinus, and the colo- 
nists who settled in Armorica under Brit- 
ish laws. Then I shall tell of Igraine, 
pregnant with Arthur through the fatal 
wizardry of Merlin, who gave to Uther 
Pendragon the face and the armor of her 
husband Gorlois. Oh then, if life is granted 
me, thou, my shepherd-pipe, shalt hang 
neglected on the gnarled pine, or be changed 
to shrill forth the strains of my native land, 
and the cry of Britons in battle. Native 
strains, do I say ? Yea, one man cannot 
hope to accomplish all things. It will be 
sufficient reward and honor for me, even 
though I remain forever unknown and in- 
glorious among the other nations of the 
world, if only blond-haired Ouse shall read 
me, and he who drinks of Alan-water, and 
the whirling Humber, and the woods of 
Trent ; above all, if my Thames shall sing 
my songs, and Tamur mineral - stained, 
and the far-off wave-beaten Orkneys. 

" Go to your folds unfed, my lambs ; 
your master is troubled. All these plans 
and dreams I was keeping for thee, wrapped 
in tough laurel-bark, these and more be- 
sides. I dreamed of showing thee the two 
cups which Manso gave me, Manso, not the 
least glory of the Neapolitan shore. They 



374 



LATIN POEMS 



Bina dedit, mirum artis opus, mirandus et 

ipse, 
Et circum gemino cselaverat argumento. 
In medio Rubri Maris unda, et odoriferum 

ver, 
Littora longa Arabum, et sudantes balsama 

sylvse ; 
Has inter Phoenix, divina avis, unica terris, 
Cseruleuin fulgens diversicoloribus alis, 
Auroram vitreis surgentem respicit undis; 
Parte alia polus omnipatens, et magnus 

Olympus: 190 

Quis putet ? hie quoque Amor, pictaeque in 

nube pharetrae, 
Arma corusca, faces, et spicula tincta py- 

ropo; 
Nee tenues animas, pectusque ignobile 

vulgi, 
Hinc ferit; at, circum llammantia lumina 

torquens, 
Semper in erectum spargit sua tela per 

orbes 
Impiger, et pronos nunquam collimat ad 

ictus: 
Hinc mentes ardere sacrae, formseque deo- 

rum. 
" Tu quoque in his — nee me fallit spes 

lubrica, Damon — 
Tu quoque in his certe es; namqu6 tuadul- 

cis abiret 
Sanctaque simplicitas ? nam quo tua Can- 
dida virtus ? 200 
Nee te Lethaeo fas quaesivisse sub Oreo; 
Nee tibi conveniunt lacrymse, nee flebimus 

ultra. 
Ite procul, lacrymae; purum colit sethera 

Damon, 
iEthera purus habet, pluvium pede reppu- 

lit arcum; 
Heroumque animas inter, divosque per- 

ennes, 
iEthereos haurit latices et gaudia potat 
Ore sacro. Quin tu, caeli post jura recepta, 
Dexter ades, placidusque fave, quicunque 

vocaris ; 
Seu tu noster eris Damon, sive aequior 

audis 
Diodotus, quo te divino nomine cuncti 210 
Caelicolae norint, sylvisque vocabere Damon. 
Qubd tibi purpureus pudor, et sine labe 

juventus 
Grata f uit, quod nulla tori libata voluptas, 
En ! etiam tibi virginei servantur honores ! 
Ipse, caput nitidum cinctus rutilante corona, 



are wonders of art, even as the giver is 
wonderful. About them is wrought a 
double brede ; in the midst the Red Sea 
rolls, and spring scatters its odors ; along 
the far coasts of Araby the trees drop bal- 
sam. Among the trees Phcenix, divine 
bird, unique on earth, blazes cerulean with 
multi-colored wings, while he watches the 
morning rise over the vitreous waters. In 
another place is the mighty stretch of sky 
where Olympus lies open to view. Yes, 
and Love is there, too ; in clouds his quiver 
is pictured, his shining arms, his torch, his 
arrows tipped with fiery bronze. But he 
does not aim at light minds, at the herd of 
vulgar souls. No; he rolls his flaming eyes 
and sends his arrows right upward through 
the orbs of heaven, never aiming a down- 
ward stroke. Under his fire the souls of 
the blessed burn, and the bodies of the 
gods. 

The gods ! Thou art among them, Da- 
mon, unless hope deceives me ; among them 
tbou surely art. For whither should thy 
sweet and holy simplicity go ? Whither 
thy righteousness and candor ? 'T would 
be sin to seek thee in Lethean Orcus. Tears 
are not for thee ; I shall weep no more. 
Go hence, lamentation ! Damon the pure 
dwells in skies of purity. Beneath his feet 
he has spurned the rainbow. Among hero- 
souls and deathless divinities he drinks the 
milk of Paradise ; he sips joy with his 
sacred lips. Now that thou possessest the 
rights of Heaven, O my friend, stand at 
my right hand, show me thy gentle favor, 
however I call upon thee, — whether by 
the old name of Damon that our woods 
heard, or whether Diodotus please thee 
better, the divine name Gift-of-God, by 
which the heavenly people know thee. Be- 
cause thy cheek kept its rosy blush and thy 
youth its stainlessness, because thou knew- 
est not the joy of marriage, lo, for thy vir- 
ginal spirit virginal honors are reserved. 
Thy bright head crowned with light, and 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



375 



Lsetaque frondentis gestans umbracula 

palmae, 
iEtermim perages imraortales hymenseos, 
Cautus ubi, choreisque furit lyra mista 

beatis, 
Festa Sionseo bacchautur et Orgia thyrso." 



glad palms in tby hand, thou dost ever act 
and act again the immortal nuptials, there 
where singing is, and the lyre mixes madly 
with the chorals beatific, and the wild orgies 
rage under the thyrsus of Sion. 



AD JOANNEM ROUSIUM 

OXONIENSIS ACADEMLE BIBLIOTHECARIUM 

January 23, 1646 

De libro Poematum amisso, quevi Me sibi denuo mitti ftoshriabat, ut cum aliis nostris in 
Bibliothecd Publicd ?-eponeret, Ode. 

Ode tribus constat Strophis, totidemque Antistrophis, una" demum Epodo clausis ; quas, tametsi omnes nee 
versuum numero nee certis ubique colis exacte respondeant, ita tamen secuimus, commode legendi potius 
quam ad antiquos concinendi modos rationem spectantes. Alioquin hoc genus rectius fortasse dici mono- 
strophicum debuerat. Metra partim sunt Kara crxecnv, partim an-oAeAv/oieVa. Phaleucia quae sunt spon- 
daeum tertio loco bis admittunt, quod idem in secundo loco Catullus ad libitum fecit. 

TO JOHN ROUSE 

LIBRARIAN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 

On a book of poems, which he (the Librarian of Oxford) lately asked to be sent to him, in order that he 
might place it with the author's other works in the public library, and which was lost on the journey. 
An Ode. 



In 1646, John Rouse, Librarian of the Bod- 
leian, applied to Milton for copies of all the 
works which he had published, in order that a 
complete set might be daposited in the library. 
Milton accordingly sent his 1645 volume of 
English and Latin poems (" double book in a 
single binding,") together with the eleven prose 
pamphlets written between 1641 and 1644. The 
pamphlets arrived safely, but the volume of 
poems was lost or stolen on the journey. Rouse 
then applied for another copy, which Milton 
sent, accompanying it with the following half- 
serious ode, addressed to the lost book. The 
references in it to the troubled state of Eng- 
land were rendered particularly pertinent by 
the fact that at the time of writing Oxford 



was the headquarters of the Cavalier army, 
and all academic routine had been broken up. 
Milton looks forward, rather wistfully and 
wearily, to the time when the Muses of learn- 
ing shall be recalled to their old abodes, and 
the "harpy pest" of royal soldiery be driven 
away. He sees in the placing of his own books 
in the care of a sedulous scholar, and in the 
shadow of a great library, an earnest of the 
time when " a distant generation, an age of 
sounder hearts, will render fairer judgment on 
all things." To get the full force of the pas- 
sage, we must remember that Milton had just 
come to the end of the divorce controversy, 
which had exhausted him with its passion and 
bitterness. 



STROPHE I 

Gemelle cultu simplici gaudens liber, 
Fronde licet gemina, 
Munditieque nitens non operosa, 
Quam manus attulit 
Juvenilis olim 

Sedula, tamen haud nimii poetae; 
Dum vagus Ausonias nunc per umbras, 
Nunc Britannica per vireta lusit, 
Insons populi, barbitoque devius 



STROPHE I 

Double book in a single binding, crowned 
mayhap with double laurel, bright with un- 
studied adornment lavished in time past by 
my boyish hand, — a sedulous hand, but not 
yet overmuch a poet's, — while I played 
through Italy's forest-shade or over the 
green fields of England, in those days when, 
still innocent of my nation's troubles, I 



376 



LATIN POEMS 



Indulsit patrio, mox itidem pectine Dau- 
nio io 

Longinquum intonuit melos 
Vicinis, et humum vix tetigit pede: 



ANTISTROPHE 

Quis te, parve liber, quis te fratribus 

Subduxit reliquis dolo, 

Cum tu missus ab urbe, 

Docto jugiter obsecrante amico, 

Illustre tendebas iter 

Thamesis ad incunabula 

Cserulei patris, 

Fontes ubi limpidi 

Aonidum, thyasusque sacer, 

Orbi notus per immensos 

Temporum lapsus redeunte cselo, 

Celeberque futurus in sevuni ? 



STROPHE 2 

Mod5 quis deus, aut editus deo, 

Pristinam gentis miseratus indolem, 

(Si satis noxas luimus priores, 

Mollique luxu degener otium) 

Tollat nefandos civium tumultus, 

Almaque revocet studia sanctus, 30 

Et relegatas sine sede Musas 

Jam pene totis finibus Angligenum, 

Immundasque volncres 

Unguibus imminentes 

Figat Apollinea pharetra, 

Phineamque abigat pestem procul amne 



ANTISTROPHE 

Quin tu, libelle, nuntii licet mala 

Fide, vel oscitantia, 

Semel erraveris agmine fratrum, 

Seu quis te teneat specus, 

Seu qua te latebra, forsan unde vili 

Callo tereris institoris insulsi, 

Lsetare felix; en ! iterum tibi 

Spes nova fulget posse prof undam 

Fugere Lethen, vehique superam 

In Jovis aulam remige penna: 



STROPHE 3 

Nam te Roiisius sui 

Optat peculi, numeroque justo 

Sibi pollicitum queritur abesse, 

Rogatque venias ille, cujus inclyta 50 



touched my native lute, or played with 
Italian quill a far-brought melody to those 
about me, my feet scarce touching the earth 
for elation, — 



ANTISTROPHE 

Who filched thee, little book, from thy 
mates, when at my learned friend's re- 
peated instance thou tookest thy way from 
the great city to the cradle of blue Thames, 
where the limpid fountains of the Muses 
are, and where ring the sacred shouts which 
shall be heard and held famous forever, as 
long as the sky rolls through the immense 
cycles of Time ? 



STROPHE II 

Ah, what god or demi-god will take 
pity on the pristine worth of our English 
race (if we have mourned enough our past 
faults, and our soft degenerate ease) and 
take from us this curse of civil strife, call 
back with holy voice the Muses who have 
been thrust from their old abodes and driven 
almost quite from English ground, transfix 
with Apollo's dart the unclean birds whose 
claws threaten us, and drive away the 
whole harpy pest far from the waters of 
Hippocrene ? 



ANTISTROPHE 

Thou, little book, though by the perfidy 
or carelessness of my messenger thou wert 
stolen from the number of thy mates, to be 
thrown into some cave or den, where per- 
haps thou art rubbed by a huckster's sordid 
palm, yet be glad : lo ! the bright hope 
may again be thine to escape oblivion, and 
be lifted on oaring wings to the courts of 
Jove: 



STROPHE III 

For Rouse — he into whose care are given 
the mighty monuments of departed minds — 
desires thee to be of his flock; he complains 
that thou art lacking from the full number 



POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES 



377 



Sunt data viriini monumenta curse; 

Teque adytis etiam sacris 

Voluit reponi, quibus et ipse praesidet 

iEternorum operura custos fidelis, 

Quaestorque gazae nobilioris 

Quam cui prsefuit Ion, 

Clarus Erechtbeides, 

Opulenta dei per templa parentis, 

Fulvosque tripodas, donaque Delphica, 

Ion Actaea genitus Creusa. 60 

ANTISTROPHE 

Ergo tu visere lucos 

Musarum ibis amoenos; 

Diamque Phcebi rursus ibis in domum 

Oxonia. quam valle eolit, 

Delo posthabita, 

Bifidoque Parnassi jugo; 

Ibis honestus, 

Postquam egregiam tu quoque sortem 

Nactus abis, dextri prece sollicitatus amiei. 

Illic legeris inter alta nomina 70 

Authorum, Graiae simul et Latinae 

Antiqua gentis lumina et verum decus. 

EPODOS 

Vos tandem baud vacui mei labores, 
Quicquid hoc sterile fudit ingenium, 
Jam ser5 placidam sperare jubeo 
Perfunctam invidia requiem, sedesque bea- 

tas 
Quas bonus Hermes 
Et tutela dabit solers Roiisi, 
Qu5 neque liugua procax vulgi penetrabit, 

atque longe 
Turba legentum prava facesset; 80 

At ultimi nepotes 
Et cordatior aetas 
Jndicia rebus aequiora forsitan 
Adhibebit integro sinu. 
Turn, livore sepulto, 
Si quid meremur sana posteritas sciet, 
Roiiso favente. 



promised him, and asks that thou be sent. 
Thee too he will place in the sacred inner 
places over which he presides; guardian he 
of works eternal, and custodian of nobler 
treasures than those shining tripods and 
Delphic offerings of which Ion, famous son 
of Apollo and the Attic maid Creusa, had 
custody in the rich temple of his father. 



ANTISTROPHE 

Therefore thou shalt go to look upon the 
pleasant groves of the Muses; thou shalt 
enter the divine house of Apollo where he 
dwells in the vale of Oxford, preferring 
that habitation to Delos and to cloven- 
peaked Parnassus. Thou shalt go with 
honor, at the solicitation of a propitious 
friend, who reserves for thee no common 
destiny. Thou shalt be read among the 
lofty names of Greek and Latin authors, 
ancient lights of the people and their true 
glory. 

EPODOS 

You then, my labors, were not vain, nor 
anything which this poor genius of mine 
has put forth. I bid you look forward to 
a time when envy shall have worn itself 
out, and you shall enjoy quiet rest in those 
blessed abiding-places which good Hermes 
and the watchful tutelage of Rouse shall 
give you, where the prattling tongue of the 
vulgar shall not penetrate, and the crowd 
of silly readers be far off. A distant gen- 
eration, an age of sounder hearts, perhaps 
will render fairer judgment on all things; 
and then, when all spite and rancor is buried, 
Posterity, thanks to Rouse, will be able to 
see with clear eyes whether any merit is 
mine. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



I. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 7. On the Morning of Christ's Na- 
tivity. 

15. Heavenly Muse ; the Muse of sacred song 
addressed at the beginning of Par. Lost. 

19. Now while the Heaven, etc. Cf. Elegy 
VI, near the end, where Milton speaks of begin- 
ning the Hymn at the first light of dawn on 
Christmas day. 

23. Wisards; wise men : the present sense of 
"enchanter" existed in Milton's day, but he 
follows Spenser in using the word as a term of 
compliment. 

28. From out his secret altar, etc. ; cf . the 
Reason of Church Government : " that eternal 
Spirit, that . . . sends out his seraphim, with 
the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and pu- 
rify the lips of whom he pleases." The refer- 
ence is to Isaiah vi. 6-7. 

41. Blame; wrong, not reproof. 

48. Turning sphere ; the whole universe of 
concentric spheres, according to the Ptolemaic 
astronomy. 

50. Turtle-wing ; the turtle-dove, like the olive 
and myrtle, is a traditional emblem of peace. 

56. Hooked chariot ; currus falcatus, chariot 
with scythes projecting outward from the axles. 

64. Whist; hushed. The word is another 
form of "hist," both originally onomatopseie 
exclamations to enforce silence. 

68. Birds of calm; while the halcyon was 
breeding, according to the classical tradition, 
the sea was calm. Charmed ; laid under a spell. 

71. Bending one way their precious influence; 
bending toward the new-born babe all the 
good influence which the stars were supposed to 
exert upon the lives of mortals. Cf . Job xxxviii. 
31. "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of 
Pleiades." 

74. Lucifer; the morning star. 

85. Lawn; field, or any open space of ground. 

86. Point of d awn ; break of dawn. Cf. mod- 
ern French point du jour, and the old verb poin- 
dre. to dawn. 

89. Mighty Pan; Christ, as the "good shep- 
herd," is frequently introduced into the pastoral 
poetry of the Renaissance as Pan. 

92. Silly; simple, innocent. 

95. Strook ; the favorite form with Milton, 
though he has also struck and strucken. 

101-103. Construe : Nature, that heard such 
sounds thrilling the airy region (i. e. the upper 
air) beneath the hollow round of Cynthia's seat 
(i. e. the sphere of the moon). 

106. Its occurs only three times in Milton. 
The form was not commonly adopted until the 
close of the century. 



111. Shamefaced ; shamefast, modest. 
" Faced " is the Anglo-Saxon suf&x faest. 

114. Displayed; spread out. Latin displica- 
tus. 

116. Unexpressive ; inexpressible. Cf . Lyci- 
das, "the unexpressive nuptial song," and Ad 
Patrem, " inenarrabile carmen." 

125-132. Ping out, ye crystal spheres, etc. ; for 
once, let the music of the nine spheres moving 
upon each other become audible to mortal ears. 

146. Tissued clouds probably refers to the 
cloth called tissue, woven of silk and silver 
threads. 

156. Wakeful trump ; awakening trump. 

157-159. " And Mount Sinai was altogether 
on a'smoke, because the Lord descended upon 
it in fire. . . . And when the voice of the trum- 
pet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, 
Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice." 
Exod. xix. 18-19. 

168. The Old Dragon ; Satan is so spoken of 
in Revelations. 

186. Genius, i. e. the genius loci, or guardian 
spirit of a place. 

189-191. The Lares, beneficent spirits of the 
dead, were worshiped by the Romans, and a 
particular room in private houses (here referred 
to as "holy hearth ") was set apart for them. 
The Lemures were inimical spirits of the dead, 
of a lower grade than the Lares, and approxi- 
mating to our ghosts or goblins. 

194. Flamens, priests of ancient Rome. 
" Quaint " is probably to be taken in the sense, 
not of "odd," but of "elaborate," "ceremoni- 
ous." 

197. Peor and Baalim ; different names of 
the same sun-god, called also Baal-Peor, wor- 
shiped by the Phoenicians. 

199. Twice-battered god of Palestine ; Dagon, 
a sea-god of the Philistines. See 2 Samuel v. 
3-4. 

200. Ashtaroth, the moon-goddess of the Phoe- 
nicians, identical with the Syrian Astarte and 
the Greek Aphrodite. 

203. Libyc Hammon ; an Egyptian deity 
whose chief seat of worship was at Thebes. He 
was represented in the form of a ram, with 
curled horns. 

204. Thammuz ; see note to Par. Lost, I. 446. 
205-210. Milton had in mind, Warton tli ought, 

the description of Moloch in Sandys's Travels, 
where the god is described as an " Idoll of brasse, 
having the head of a Calfe, the rest of a kingly 
figure, with arms extended to receive the misera- 
ble sacrifice, seared to death with his burning 
embracements. For the Idol was hollowe with- 
in, filled with fire. And least their lamentable 
shreeks should sad the hearts of their parents, 



382 



APPENDIX 



the Priests of Molech did deaf e their eares with 
the continual clang- of trumpets and timbrels." 

212. Isis ; goddess of the Earth; Orus, or 
Horus, god of the sun ; Anubis, son of Osiris, 
represented with the head of a dog or jackal. 

213-220. Osiris was worshiped by the Egyp- 
tians under the form of Apis, the sacred bull. 
He was said to have been put into a chest by 
conspirators and floated down the Nile. This 
chest or ark was preserved at Memphis as an 
object of worship. 

226. Typhon, or Typhosus, was represented by 
the Greeks as a hundred-headed monster, de- 
stroyed by Zeus. His Egyptian name was Suti ; 
he was worshiped in Egypt sometimes under 
the form of a crocodile, which fact Milton seems 
here to have in mind. 

240. Youngest-teemed ; youngest-born. 

Page 10. A Paraphrase on Psalm CXIV. 

1. Terah's faithful son ; Abraham, whose 
"blest seed" were the children of Israel. 

3. Pharian; Egyptian, from Pharaoh. 

Page 11. A Paraphrase on Psalm 
CXXXVI. 

46. Erythrean main; the Red Sea, from a 
Greek word meaning red. 

65-66. Seon . . . that ruled the Amorrean 
coast; a borrowing from Buchanan's Latin 
version of Psalm cxxxv. : Quique Amorrhceis 
Leon requavit in oris. 

Page 12. On the Death of a Fair In- 
fant. 

8-9. Grim Aquilo; Aquilo, or Boreas, the 
north wind, carried off Oreithyia, the daughter 
of King Erechtheus. 

23-27. Hyacinthus, son of the king of Laconia, 
was slain by a quoit which Apollo threw and 
which the wind blew from its course. The flower 
hyacinth sprang from the ground where the 
boy's blood had flowed. Eurotas is a river of 
Laconia. 

39. That high, first-moving sphere ; the Primum 
Mobile, or First-moved, the outer containing 
sphere of the Ptolemaic system. See Introduc- 
tion to Paradise Lost, on Milton's cosmology. 

47. Earth's sons; the Titans, who strove to 
conquer Olympus and overthrow Zeus. 

50. That just Maid; Astraea, or Justice, who 
left the earth after the Golden Age. 

68. The slaughtering pestilence ; referring to 
the plague which raged in England during the 
summer of 1625. 

76. He will an offspring give; Edward and 
John Phillips scarcely fulfilled the prophecy. 

Page 13. At a Vacation Exercise. 

7-8. Milton asks pardon for deferring the 
English portion of the exercise till the last. 

14. The daintiest dishes; i. e. the dramatic 
speeches of Quantity, Quality, and the other 
Predicaments. 

19-20. TAo.se new-fangled toys, etc. ; an inter- 
esting reference to the Marinist school of con- 
ceitful writing, by which Milton himself was 
much affected in his youth. 

74. Subject . . . to many an Accident; the 
lines preceding and following constitute a rid- 
dle on the Aristotelian doctrine of Substance ; 



so long as Substance remained absolute or unde- 
termined by the Accidents of quality, quantity, 
time, place, posture, habit, action, and passion, 
he " walked invisible ; " he was dependent upon 
them "for clothing" because undetermined 
substance is not perceptible. 

90. Your learned hands; addressed directly 
to the student audience. 

95-100. Sullen^ Mole, that runneth underneath, 
etc. ; the Mole, in Surrey, flows through a sub- 
terranean channel for a part of its course. The 
Severn derived its name from the maid Sa- 
brina, who was drowned in it (see Comus, 1. 
824). The Dee, near Chester, was hallowed by 
Druidical associations. Humber was believed 
to have derived its name from an early Hun- 
nish invader. Thames is " royal-towered " be- 
cause it flows past Hampton Court, Windsor, 
and London. 

Page 15. The Passion. 

1-4. This reference to the Hymn on the Na- 
tivity shows that the present poem was written 
later, probably on the following Easter. 

6. Wintry solstice ; when the days are short- 
est. 

24-26. The reference is to the Christiad, a 
Latin poem by Marco Girolamo Vida of Cre- 
mona, who flourished during the first half of 
the sixteenth century. 

37. The prophet; Ezekiel. 

43. That sad sepulchral rock; the tomb of 
Christ. 

56. Had got a race of mourners, etc. ; refers 
to the fable Ixion, who mistook a cloud for 
Juno and begot the Centaurs. 

Page 16. On Shakespeare. 

10. Thy easy numbers ; "His mind and hand 
went together : And what he thought he uttered 
with that easiness that we have scarcely re- 
ceived from him a blot in his papers," say the 
editors of the first Folio Shakespeare. Milton's 
habit of composition was very different. 

12. Delphic lines, i. e. oracular, inspired. 

14. Dost make us marble ; an extravagant and 
rather tasteless conceit ; the meaning is that 
Shakespeare excites our imagination so intensely 
that we are carried out of ourselves, become 
dead to our surroundings. 

Page 17. On the University Carrier. 

1. Girt; girth. 

8. Dodged ; Masson quotes the following defi- 
nition of the word " dodge " from Wedgwood's 
Dictionary of English Etymologies ; "to jog, 
to move quickly to and fro ; hence to follow in 
the track of any one, to follow his ins and outs, 
also to deceive one by change of motion." 

Page 17. Another on the Same. 

5. Sphere-metal, i. e. of material as enduring 
as that of the heavenly spheres. 

14. Too long vacation hastened on his term, a 
pun on the Long Vacation and Terms of the 
English universities. 

32. His wain was his increase ; a pun on the 
word wain, a wagon, and wane, a diminishing. 

Page 18. On the Marchioness of Win- 
chester. 

24. To greet her of a lovely son; Charles Paulet, 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



383 



Lord St. John of Basing, afterwards Duke of 
Bolton. 
26. Lucina ; goddess of child-birth. 

28. Atropos; the Fate who clips the thread of 
life ; her sisters were Clotho and Lachesis. 

50. Sweet rest seize thee : the verb is used in 
the legal sense, to put in possession of. 

(53. Syrian shepherdess, Rachel, wife of Jacob. 

Page 19. On his Being Arrived to the 
Age of Twenty-three. 

5. Perhaps my semblance ; an allusion to the 
extreme youthfulness of Milton's appearance 
after he reached the age of manhood. 

Page 26. L'Allegro. 

1-3. Having personified Melancholy, Milton 
invents a parentage for her, and assigns as her 
place of birth a cave like that of her father 
Cerberus, on the banks of Styx, the ' l river of 
deadly hate." Erebus, not Cerberus, was prop- 
erly the spouse of Night. 

9. Ragged; rugged. 

10. Cimmerian desert; the Cimmerians are 
placed by Homer in a waste land far to the west, 
perpetually involved in mist and darkness. 

12-16. The first parentage assigned to Eu- 
phrosyne (on the strength of a scholiast's com- 
mentary to a passage of the iEneid) makes her 
the half-sister of Comus, who was the son of 
Circe by Bacchus. Euphrosyne represents in- 
nocent pleasure ; Comus represents evil, sensual 
pleasure. In the double parentage Milton has 
in mind two ideals of innocent pleasure — that 
which springs from Wine and Love, and that 
which springs from Dawn and the light breezes 
of summer. 

24. Buxom ; spritely, lively. It originally 
meant pliant, yielding (German biegsam), and is 
so used by Milton elsewhere, in the phrase 
" buxom air." 

29. Hebe, cup-bearer to the gods, and person- 
ification of eternal youth. 

36. Liberty is probably called a "mountain- 
nymph " because of the traditional association 
of the love of freedom with mountain-dwell- 
ers. 

40. Unreproved ; unreprovable, innocent. 

43. Watch-tower; a metaphor which partakes 
of the nature of a pun ; the word is suggested 
by " tour," which means soaring flight. 

45-48. Then to come, etc. ; a much-disputed 
passage. What is the construction of the infini- 
tive ? Grammatically it seems to be parallel 
with " to hear " just above, in which case it is 
L'Allegro who comes to the window of his room. 
But in that case, to what or whom does he bid 
good morrow, unless, indeed, it be to the waking 
world in general? If we suppose "lark" to 
be the understood subject of the infinitive, the 
construction is very irregular, and Milton ought 
to have known that larks do nothing of the 
kind. Mr. Masson cuts the knot by supposing 
L'Allegro to have emerged from the house, and 
to look in at the window to greet some one in- 
side. The reader is at liberty to choose. 

45. In spite of sorrow ; in order to spite sor- 
row ; the idea seems rather awkwardly intro- 
duced. 



48. Twisted eglantine; eglantine is identical 
with sweet-briar; in calling it "twisted" Mil- 
ton appears to have confused it with some vine, 
perhaps the honeysuckle. 

55. Hoar hill ; covered with hoar-frost, since 
the hunting season is in the autumn. 

60. State ; triumphal progress, like that of a 
monarch, with the clouds " in thousand liveries 
dight " as the sun's attendants. 

67. Tells his tale ; the common interpretation 
of this phrase is "tells his story." But tale 
may be used in the sense of " number," and 
tells in the sense of " counts ; " in that case the 
phrase would mean, " counts the number of his 
flock," to see that none had been lost during 
the night, — certainly a more realistic morning 
occupation than story-telling. 

71. Lawns; open fields: fallows; ploughed 
land left untilled. 

11. Towers and battlements ; probably a remi- 
niscence of Windsor Castle, which is not far 
from Horton. 

80. Cynosure ; the constellation of the lesser 
Bear, which contains the Pole-star. The Tyr- 
ian (not the Greek) sailors steered by this con- 
stellation. Cynosure means literally " dog's 
tail," the name referring to the fancied shape 
of the constellation. The secondary meaning 
of the word, is of course, "something much 
looked at." 

83-88. The names are common ones in both 
classic and modern pastoral poetry. The intro- 
duction of them here gives a touch of unreality 
which is of questionable appropriateness. 

91. Secure; from Latin securus, care-free. 

94. Rebeck ; a kind of rude fiddle or crowd, 
the precursor of the violin. 

102-114. A maid of the company tells of the 
mischievous doings of Mab, who was tradition- 
ally the patron and tormentor of servant maids. 
A man then tells of two characters famous in 
folk-lore, Friar Rush, or Jack-a-lantern, as he 
was variously called, and Robin Goodfellow. 
The latter performed for farm-laborers much 
the same offices of capricious good-will, sprin- 
kled with mischief, as did Mab for the maids. 

110. Lubbar-fend, i. e. lubbar-fiend. Cf. 
" Lob-lie-by-the-fire." 

114. Matin ; matin or morning song. 

120. Weeds ; garments. The word was origi- 
nally of universal application, though now con- 
fined to the mourning garments of widows. 

131. Well-trod; this allusion to the actors is 
an incidental proof that L'Allegro is supposed 
to view the plays on the stage of a theatre, not 
merely to read them. 

132. Jonson's learned sock; "sock" implies 
comedy, from the soccus, or low slipper, worn by 
actors in comedy, in contrast with the cothurnus, 
or high boot (buskin), worn by actors in tragedy. 
The learning displayed by Jonson in his great 
comedies much impressed his contemporaries. 

133-134 ; Sweetest Shakespeare, etc. ; this 
characterization applies better to some of 
Shakespeare's scattered songs than to his ro- 
mantic plays or his comedies as a whole. In 
spite of the epitaph, it is extremely doubtful 



384 



APPENDIX 



whether Milton understood or rightly valued 
Shakespeare's genius. 

136. Lydian airs; the Lydian music was 
melting and voluptuous, in contrast with the 
"Dorian mode," which was solemn and mar- 
tial. 

139. Bout; originally spelled "bought," 
means bend, turn, or involution. Spenser uses 
it of the folds of a dragon's tail. It is con- 
nected with the verb " bow." 

150. His half-regained Eurydice ; an allusion 
to the well-known story of the poet Orpheus, 
who obtained from Pluto the release of his wife 
from the lower regions, on condition that he 
should not look back at her until they reached 
the upper air. When near the entrance he for- 
got the condition, and looked behind to see if 
she was following, whereupon she vanished 
from his sight. 

151-152. These lines are a reminiscence from 
Marlowe's Passionate Shepherd : — 

"If these delights thy mind may move, 
Then live with me and be my love." 

Page 28. Il Penseroso. 

3. Bested ; help, profit. 

4. Toys ; trifles, vanities. 

6. Fond ; in the old sense of "foolish." 
10. Pensioners of Morpheus' 1 train; Queen 
Elizabeth kept a body of picked noblemen, of 
great wealth and personal beauty, about her as 
" gentlemen pensioners," whose duties were 
similar to those of the present Queen's body- 
guard. Cf. Shakespeare's " The cowslips tall 
her pensioners be." 

18. Prince Memnon's sister; Memnon was 
famous for his beauty, Odysseus saying of Eury- 
pylus that he was the most beautiful man he 
had ever seen, except divine Memnon. Milton 
transfers this repute for beauty to Memnon's 
sister, though no such sister is mentioned by 
name in the legends. 

19. Starred Ethiop queen ; Cassiopeia, who 
boasted that not her own, but her daughter 
Andromache's beauty was greater than that of 
the Nereids. In revenge they persuaded Posei- 
don to send a sea-monster to ravage the coun- 
try. Both Cassiopeia and Andromache were set 
in the heavens as constellations after their 
death ; hence the epithet " starred." 

23, 24. By assigning to Melancholy this par- 
entage, Milton implies that melancholy is the 
outgrowth of solitude and youthful purity or 
sanctity of life ; or possibly of solitude and gen- 
ius. 

29. Ida's inmost grove ; Mount Ida in Crete, 
where the infant Jove was nurtured. 

33. Grain; see note to Par. Lost, V. 285. 
Here the word probably means dark blue or 
purple. 

35. Stole ; usually a long, flowing garment, 
here evidently a kind of shawl or wimple. 

_ Cypress lawn ; cypress and lawn were usually 
distinct, the former being black, the latter 
white, as in Autolycus's song in Winter's 
Tale : — 



" Lawn as white as driven snow, 
Cyprus black as e'er was crow." 

Here the two words taken together mean 
"black crepe." 
36. Decent ; comely, from Latin, deceus. 

42. Forget thyself to marble ; cf. Ep. onShak., 
" make us marble with too much conceiving." 

43. Sad ; sober, serious, with no suggestion 
of grief. 

52-54. Milton has here in mind the descrip- 
tion in Ezekiel of the sapphire-coloured throne- 
chariot of which the four wheels were four 
Cherubim, and in the midst of which burned a 
great fire. He singles out one of these Cheru- 
bim as the guide of the chariot. It is to be re- 
membered that in mediaeval speculation the 
Cherubim had as their especial gift insight into 
divine mysteries. 

55. Hist ; an imperative, meaning " usher 
along or bring along with finger on Up, saying 
" Hist ! " 

59. Cynthia checks her dragon-yoke; the dra- 
gon-team does not properly belong to the moon, 
but to Ceres or Demeter. Milton breaks with 
the classic tradition in this respect, not only 
here but in his Latin poems. See his verses on 
the death of the Bishop of Ely, In Obitum 
Prsesulis Eliensis, 11. 56-58. 

65. Unseen; unlike L' Allegro, II Penseroso 
prefers to have no witness of his walks abroad. 

65, 66. 

And, missing thee, I walk unseen 
On the dry smooth-shaven green ; 

The English nightingale is said to 'cease its 
singing about the time that the grass is mown. 
If this is true, these lines show a delicacy of 
observation unusual in Milton. 

74. Curfew; from French couvre-feu, a bell 
formerly rung at eight or nine o'clock as a sig- 
nal that lights should be extinguished. 

87. Outwatch the Bear; as the constellation 
of the Bear never sets, this implies watching 
until the stars faded away at dawn. 

88. Thrice great Hermes ; Hermes Trismegis- 
tus, a mythical philosopher and magician, con- 
nected perhaps with the Egyptian king and 
philosopher Thot. Various books of mysticism 
and magic, written by the Alexandrian Neo- 
platonists and others, went under his name in 
the Middle Ages. 

88, 89. Unsphere the spirit of Plato, i. e. call 
down his spirit from the heavenly sphere which 
it inhabits. 

93-96. Mediaeval speculation established vari- 
ous relations between astrology and demonol- 
ogy, here vaguely hinted at. 

99, 100. Milton has in mind such plays as the 
Seven Against Thebes of ^Eschylus, the CEdi- 
pus Tyrannus and Antigone of Sophocles, the 
Electra and Iphigenia of Euripides, the Hecuba, 
and the Troades. 

102. Buskined stage, i. e. tragic stage ; see 
note to L' Allegro, 1. 132. The fact that Milton 
speaks of examples of noble modern tragedy as 
"rare," shows that he was out of sympathy 
with the Elizabethan dramatic movement. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



38 S 



104. Musceus ; a Greek poet of the mythical 
age to which Orpheus also belonged. 

110-115. The story of Cambuscan bold ; Chau- 
cer's Squire's Tale. The names which fol- 
low are persons of the story. The "Tartar 
king" is Cambuscan or Cambynskan, a corrup- 
tion of Gengis Khan, the Grand Khan of Tar- 
tary. 

113. Virtuous ring ; ring endowed with magic 
powers. 

l'JO. Where more is meant than meets the ear ; 
such poems as those of Spenser, where an alle- 
gorical meaning underlies the story. 

122. Civil-suited ; soberly dressed. 

124. The Attic Boy; Cephalus, the lover of 
Aurora. 

134. Sylvan ; Sylvanus, god of fields and for- 
ests. 

147-150. The meaning is, "Let some myste- 
rious dream move to and fro at the wings of 
Sleep, unrolling its pictures, until they fall upon 
my eyelids." The expression is so hurried that 
the idea is slightly obscured. 

156. Cloister'' s pale; pale = enclosure. For a 
long time cloister's was written without the 
apostrophe, and pale taken as an adjective. 

Page 30. To the Nightingale. 

4. Jolly, from French joli, had not its present 
connotation of rollicking fun. The meaning 
was rather " gay " or " blithe " in appearance. 

G. First heard, i. e. if heard before the cuckoo. 

Page 30. On Time. 

3. The heavy-plummet' 's pace ; i. e. the slow de- 
scent of the weights in an old-fashioned clock. 

12. Individual ; not to be divided or broken, 
so eternal. 

Page 30. At a Solemn Music. 

2. Sphere-born sisters: this is Milton's own 
mythology. Cf. Comus, 1. 241, where Echo is 
called " Daughter of the sphere." 

6. Consent; harmony. 

23. Diapason ; octave covering all the notes 
of the scale. 

27. Consort ; probably " society," from Latin 
consortium. 

Page 31. Upon the Circumcision. 

1. Ye flaming Powers, i. e. the Seraphim, 
whose name in Hebrew signifies " burning." 

6-9. Masson explains these obscure lines by 
paraphrasing thus : "if it is impossible for your 
Angelic constitutions, formed as they are of fire, 
to yield tears, yet, by burning as you sigh, you 
may borrow the water of our tears, turned into 
vapor." The process still remains a trifle vague. 

Page 38. Arcades. 

14-15. Older members of the family or friends 
may have been grouped about the chair of 
state. 

20-22. The comparison of the Dowager to 
Latona, or Leto, mother of Apollo and Arte- 
mis, conveyed a double compliment to her and 
to her offspring. Likewise the comparison to 
the "great mother" Cybele, or Rhea, mother 
of Jove, Juno, Neptune, etc., is appropriate be- 
cause of the Dowager's large family. The tur- 
reted crown of Cybele would have its counter- 
part in the duchess's coronet. 



23. Juno dares not give her odds ; Juno could 
compete with her only on equal terms. 

26, 27. Lawes, in the character of the Genius 
of the Wood, addresses the male members of 
the duchess's family, who form part of the 
pageant. "For" must be taken not with 

swains " but with " gentle," which is used in 
the sense of "nobly-born." 

33. Fair silver-buskined Nymphs ; the ladies 
of the pageant. 

44. Lot; allotment, appointment. 

51. Thwarting thunder blue; thwarting may 
be used in its early sense, " going athwart," i. e. 
zigzag ; or perhaps in its derived sense of hin- 
dering, harming. Thunder is of course put 
here for lightning, as often in Elizabethan liter- 
ature. 

52. Cross dire-looking planet ; cross means 
here rather "adverse," "bringing trouble," 
than "ill-natured." 

62-69. These difficult lines can best be made 
clear by quoting from Plato's account of the 
Myth of Er, in the tenth book of the Republic, 
as translated by Davies and Vaughan : — 

" They looked down upon a straight pillar of 
light, stretching across the whole heaven and 
earth, more like the rainbow than anything 
else, only brighter and clearer. . . . Arriving 
at the centre of the light, they saw that its ex- 
tremities were fastened by chains to the sky. 
For this light binds the sky together, like the 
hawser that strengthens a trireme, and thus 
holds together the whole revolving universe. 
To the extremities is fastened the distaff of Ne- 
cessity, by means of which all the revolutions 
of the universe are kept up. . . . The nature 
of the whorl may be thus described : In shape 
it is like an ordinary whorl ; but from Er's ac- 
count we must picture it to ourselves under the 
form of a large hollow whorl, scooped out right 
through, into which a similar, but smaller, 
whorl is nicely inserted, like those boxes which 
fit into one another. In the same way a third 
whorl is inserted within the second, a fourth 
within the third, and so on to four more. For 
in all there are eight whorls, inserted into one 
another, . . . and all together forming one 
solid whorl embracing the shaft, which is passed 
right through the centre of the eighth. . . . 
The distaff spins round upon the knees of Ne- 
cessity. Upon each of its circles stands a siren, 
who travels round with the circle, uttering one 
note in one tone ; and from all the eight notes 
there results a single harmony. At equal dis- 
tances around sit three other personages, each 
on a throne. These are the daughters of Ne- 
cessity, the Fates, Lachesis, Clotho, Atropos ; 
who, clothed in white robes, with garlands on 
their heads, chant to the music of the sirens, 
Lachesis the events of the past, Clotho those of 
the present, Atropos those of the future." 

The Myth of Er was very popular with seven- 
teenth - century writers, especially with the 
masque-writers, and in adapting the above pas- 
sage Milton did not run much risk of mystify- 
ing his audience. The " nine infolded spheres " 
are the concentric sphere of the Ptolemaic 



3 86 



APPENDIX 



Mundus, or Terrestrial Universe. The ' ' daugh- 
ters of Necessity " may be thought of as gigan- 
tic figures sitting outside the Universe, which 
rests like the whorl of a spindle on the knees 
of their mother. 

70. Keep unsteady Nature to her law ; mean- 
ing that the music of the spheres tempers the 
chaotic turbulence of Nature, and makes her 
functions harmonious and steady. 

81. State; here used in the sense of dais, or 
platform, upon which sat the throne-chair. 

97-102. Ladori's lilied banks, etc. Ladon was 
a river of Arcadia ; Lycaaus, Cyllene, Eryman- 
thus, and Maenalus were mountains of Arcadia. 

100. Syrinx, a nymph, fleeing from her lover 
Pan, prayed to be transformed into a reed. The 
Glosse to Spenser's Shepheard's Calender con- 
tinues, "So that Pan, catching at the Reedes, 
in stede of the Damosell, and puffing hard (for 
he was almost out of wind), with hys breath 
made the Reedes to pype ; which he seeing, 
tooke of them, and, in remembrance of his lost 
love, made him a pype thereof." 

Page 40. Comus. 

Dedication. _ Henry Lawes, whose name must 
often be mentioned in connection with Comus, 
stood at the head of the English composers of 
his time. He was born in 1595. His father 
was a vicar-choral of Salisbury Cathedral, and 
probably the boy received his first training as a 
chorister in the Cathedral choir. Later on he 
studied under the well-known musician Gio- 
vanni Coperario, an Englishman who had Ita- 
lianized his patronymic — John Cooper. In 1626 
Lawes was made one of the Gentlemen of the 
Chapel Royal. Coperario had won distinction 
as a writer of music for Masques ; that for the 
Masque of Flowers, 1614, was from his pen ; and 
Lawes soon turned his attention the same way. 
In 1633, in conjunction with his brother William 
Lawes and Simon Ives of St. Paul's choir, he 
produced the incidental music to Shirley's Tri- 
umph of Peace ; and wrote single handed the 
music of Carew's Caelum Britannicum. Comus 
followed in 1634. Probably Lawes was respon- 
sible for the production of Arcades. He ex- 
celled as a song-writer. He did not belong to 
the line of our learned church-composers. He 
wrote little sacred music, little at any rate that 
has survived, though we possess the coronation 
anthem — " Zadock the Priest " — composed at 
the accession of Charles II. The older histo- 
rians of English music — Burney and Hawkins 
— treat Lawes rather contemptuously. The 
former dismissed his music as ' ' languid and 
insipid ; " the latter complained that much of 
it was a compromise between recitative and air. 
Really Lawes's merit lay herein. A poet him- 
self, he was content in setting the poetry of 
others to subordinate the music to the verse. 
Accent and rhythm were preserved, and the 
melody (very often a species of aria parlante) 
did not divert attention from the words. This 
is perhaps rare with musicians, and it accounted 
for Lawes's great popularity with contemporary 
poets — Cartwright, Waller, Carew, Herrick, 
and others. Herrick and Milton were not alone 



in praising the favorite Court-composer. Dur- 
ing the civil war he lost his post in the Chapel 
Royal, but was reinstated at the Restoration. 
He died in 1662. He was buried in the Clois- 
ters of Westminster Abbey. A portrait of him 
hangs in the Music-school at Oxford. The 
elder brother was killed at the siege of Chester 
in 1645. The following sonnet by Milton was 
first printed in 1648 among several laudatory 
pieces of verse prefixed to a volume of Choice 
Psalms, put into Musick for three Voices : com- 
posed by Henry and William Lawes, Brothers, 
and Servants to his Majestie : — 

" Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song 
First taught our English music how to span 
Words with just note and accent, not to scan 
With Midas' ears, committing short and long," etc. 

The first quatrain exactly expresses the quality 
for which Lawes's music was conspicuous ; cf . 
Comus 86-88, and 494-96. The Cambridge 
draft of these lines is dated Feb. 9, 1646, new 
style. Evidently political differences had not 
interrupted the friendship of poet and composer. 
The best account of Lawes is given in the arti- 
cle on him in Grove's Dictionary of Music. — 
Verity. 

7. Pestered in this pinfold ; pestered is from 
a low-Latin word pastorium r= clog or hobble 
for a horse at pasture. It means, therefore, 
" shackled," "confined." Pin-fold = pound, 
an enclosure for strayed cattle. 

10. Mortal change ; death, change from mor- 
tality. 

13. Golden key; cf. Lycidas, 110-111. 

17. Mould — earth. _ 

18-21. In the division of territory, Neptune 
took the sea ; Jove, the sky ; and Dis (nether 
Jove), Hades. 

29. Quarters to his blue-haired deities; quar- 
ters = assigns. Sea-gods were usually repre- 
sented on the stage with blue hair, as we learn 
from the elaborate stage-direction printed with 
the old masques. 

37. Perplexed ; involved, tortuous. 

38. Horror; in the Latin sense of "rough- 
ness " or " shagginess." 

48. After the Tuscan mariners transformed ; a 
Latin construction, post nautas mutatos. The 
allusion is to the story of Bacchus, who was kid- 
napped by Tyrrhenian pirates, on his way from 
Icaria to Naxos. ' ' The god changed the masts 
and oars into serpents, and himself into a lion ; 
ivy grew round the vessel, and the sound of 
flutes was heard on every side ; the sailors were 
seized with madness, leaped into the sea, and 
were metamorphosed into dolphins." — Smith's 
Class. Diet. 

60. Celtic and Iberian fields ; France and 
Spain. 

65. Orient ; this epithet was first applied to 
gems, as coming from the East, and later came 
to have a general application to anything rich 
and clear in color. 

67. Fond; foolish. 

71. Ounce; a kind of small tiger or cata- 
mount. 



• 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



387 



88-91. Nor of less faith = as faithful in ser- 
vice as he is skilful in song. " In this office, 
etc., means, " by reason of his office as guardian 
of the mountain he is the most likely person to 
be at hand in the present emergency. 

93-99. The time indicated seems to be mid- 
night, but the details are not easy to explain. 
If the "folding-star" is Vesper, the evening- 
star, it would not " hold the top of heaven," 
but be below the horizon. The " car of day " 
would not be just quenching its axle in the At- 
lantic, but would be at the antipodes. Perhaps 
the folding-star is merely the first star seen in 
the east, which would be in the zenith at mid- 
night. "The slope sun," etc., refers to the 
cone of shadow which the earth throws outward 
from the sun ; at midnight the point of this 
cone would be in the zenith. 

116. Wavering morrice ; the morrice or morris 
was a very popular old dance brought from 
Spain ; the word is a corruption of " Moorish." 

129. Dark-veiled Cotytto; a Thracian god- 
dess, whose worship was introduced into several 
Greek states. Her rites were celebrated with 
great licentiousness. 

134, 135. The connection of Cotytto with Hec- 
ate Milton makes on his own responsibility. 
The masque-writers allowed themselves great 
liberties in dealing with the classical mythol- 
ogy. 

139. Nice ; over-fastidious, squeamish. 

140. Cabined loop-hole; the first rift in the 
clouds, through which the dawn-light streams. 

151. Trains; tricks, allurements. 

154. Spongy air; spongy, as soaking up the 
spells. 

157. Quaint habits ; fantastic garments. This 
is one of the few cases in Milton where "quaint" 
has almost its modern meaning. 

167. Gear = business ; originally, tackle. 

189. Sad votarist in palmer's weed. Votarist 
■=z one who has taken a vow to go on pilgrim- 
age ; palmer's weed = the long dark robe of the 
pilgrim to the Holy Land, who, after accom- 
plishing his pilgrimage, might bear a palm- 
branch as a token. " Sad " = serious, solemn. 

231. Airy shell ; the surrounding air, con- 
ceived of as a hollow containing vessel . 

232. Meander's margent green ; Keightley 
suggests that this river of Asia Minor was se- 
lected as a haunt for Echo because of its wind- 
ings, which would correspond to the replications 
of echoing sound. 

237. Narcissus; Echo, in love with Narcis- 
sus, pined away until only her voice was left ; 
in punishment of his hard-heartedness, he was 
made to fall in love with his own reflection in a 
brook. 

241. Daughter of the Sphere; cf. At a Solemn 
Music, "sphere-born harmonious Sisters, Voice 
and Verse." 

251, 252. A forced and rather tasteless figure, 
which has been nevertheless much admired. 

253-59. Milton mixes mythological personages 
here with a reckless hand. .The island of the 
Sirens Odysseus passed after leaving Circe. Be- 
ing previously warned by her, he bade his sailors 



put wax in their ears so that they might not 
hear the singing: he himself listened, bound to 
the mast. Scylla and Charybdis were much too 
far away from the Sirens' Isle to hear their 
singing. Although Circe has in Homer nothing 
to do with the Sirens, Verity notes that they 
are associated in the Inner Temple Masque of 
William Browne, which Milton had read. In 
the Odyssey, Circe is waited upon by four 
nymphs of wood and water. 

277-290. This kind of dialogue, called in 
Greek orixo/Auflia, is employed by all the Greek 
dramatists, especially Sophocles. 

287. Imports their loss, etc. ; i. e., Is their 
loss of importance to you, aside from your pre- 
sent need of them ? 

293. Swinked ; wearied, from Anglo-Saxon 
swincan, to labor. 

297-304. A compliment to the two boys, Lord 
Brackley and Mr. Thomas Egerton, who were 
about to enter. One of the chief duties of the 
masque-writer was to bestow compliments upon 
the distinguished personages who took part in 
the presentation. 

313. Bosky bourn = burn, or brook, with banks 
covered with bushes and trees. Bourn, mean- 
ing limits or boundary, is another word. 

315. Stray attendance ; strayed attendants. 

329, 330. Square my trial, etc. ; i. e. make my 
trial proportionate to my strength. 

332. Benison = benediction, blessing ; hence, 
welfare. 

341-342. 

star of Arcady, 
Or Tyrian Cynosure. 

Callisto, daughter of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, 
after being transformed to a she-bear by the 
jealousy of Juno, was placed by Jupiter in the 
sky as the constellation of the Great Bear (star 
of Arcady) ; Areas, her son, became the Lesser 
Bear. The Greek sailors steered by the first 
constellation, the Phoenicians by the second, 
whence it is called "Tyrian Cynosure." For 
Cynosure, see note to L' Allegro, 80. It there 
means " something gazed at by many people ; " 
here it has its original meaning. 

349. Innumerous ; innumerable. 

359. Over-exquisite ; super-subtle. 

360. A metaphor from casting the horoscope 
in astrology. 

369. Single want ; mere want. 

375-380. Pattison calls attention to these lines 
as a description of Milton's life at Horton. 

376. Seeks to ; resorts to. 

378. Plumes = prunes. 

380. The prefix in " to-ruffled " is intensive. 

393-395. One of the labors of Hercules was to 
fetch the golden apples from the tree in the 
garden of the Hesperides, guarded by the dra- 
gon Ladon. Unenchanted = not to be en- 
chanted, proof against enchantment. 

401. Danger will wink on Opportunity; "wink 
on " = shut the eye to, fail to see. We would 
look for some such word as "desire" in the 
place of "danger." 

423. Unharbored ; offering no shelter or har- 
bor. 



3 88 



APPENDIX 



424. Infamous ; of evil fame. 

426. Mountainer ; mountaineer is in Shake- 
speare and his contemporaries almost always 
used in a bad sense. 

429. Horrid; Latin horridus, rough, bris- 
tling. 

430. Unblenched ; unfaltering. Cf . Sir Henry 
Wotton's letter to Milton, " You will not blanch 
Paris in your way ; " blanch and blench are the 
same. 

451. Dashed ; put out of countenance, 
shamed. 

454. Sincerely = entirely ; Latin sincerus, pure, 
unalloyed. 

455. For " liveried angels " compare the line 
in Nativity Ode, " bright-harnessed angels sit 
in order serviceable." Lackey = attend. 

471^175. This passage is adapted from the 
Phsedo of Plato ; see Jowett's translation, vol. 
i. p. 429. 

474. Sensualty ; i. e. sensuality, and often un- 
warrantably so emended by editors. 

480. Crude = undigested, a derived meaning 
from the original one of " unripe." 

483. N ight- founder ed ; plunged in night, 
night-bound. 

494-496. A pretty compliment to Lawes. 

495. Huddling ; hurrying, one wave crowding 
upon another. 

509. Sadly; seriously. 

517. Chimeras ; the Chimera, slain by Beller- 
ophon, was a beast with a lion's head, dragon's 
tail, and woman's body. 

520. Navel; centre. 

531, 532. Crofts that brow, etc. ; small enclosed 
pieces of land near to the houses on the hill, 
sloping up from the valley. 

548. Ere a close; "close" is probably used 
in the technical musical sense of "cadence;" 
if so, the meaning is, " Ere I had reached the 
first cadence." 

552-554. This is a mueh-diseussed passage. 
All three early editions, that of Lawes, 1637, 
and those of Milton, 1645 and 1673, read " drow- 
sie frighted ; " the Cambridge manuscript alone 
gives "drowsy flighted " (the hyphen has been 
put in by the editors). " Drowsy-flighted " is 
certainly the more picturesque ; but what is to 
be done with " gave respite to " ? The " stop 
of sudden silence " could give to the steeds of 
Sleep respite from fright, and allow them to 
proceed in their course undisturbed ; but could 
it give them respite in any other sense ? It is 
possibly this difficulty which caused Milton to 
leave the picturesque phrase in the one place, 
and the logical one in the o f her. 

567. "Near" modifies "thou," not "snare." 

568. Lawns ; cleared spaces in the wood. 
607. Purchase ; booty. 

610. I love thy courage yet; the force of 
" yet " is either " still as of old," or " although 
it is of no avail." 

620. Of small regard to see to ; colloquially, 
" not much to look at." One wonders if Milton 
has his friend Diodati in mind. 

634. Unknown, and like esteemed, i. e. unes- 
teemed. 



635. Clouted ; patched. The derivation from 
French clou, nail, has been disproved. 

636, 637. Cf . Odyssey, x. 281-306 : " Therewith 
the slayer of Argos gave me the plant that he 
had plucked from the ground, and he showed 
me the growth thereof. It was black at the 
root, but the flower was like to milk. Moly 
the gods call it, but it is hard for mortal men 
to dig ; howbeit with the gods all things are 
possible " (Butcher and Lang). 

638. Hozmony; a word of Milton's creation, 
from Haeraonia, or Thessaly, the land of magic. 

646. Limetwigs of his spells ; a reference to 
the practice of catching birds by smearing bird- 
lime on the twigs of trees. 

655. Virgil (^Eneid, viii. 251, 252) attributes 
this action to Cacus, Vulcan's son. 

661. Daphne, fleeing from the embraces of 
Apollo, prayed to be changed into a laurel- 
tree. The tree was ever afterward sacred to 
Apollo. 

675-676. Odyssey, iv. 219-229: " Helen, daugh- 
ter of Zeus, presently cast a drug into the wine 
whereof they (Menelaus and Telemachus) drank, 
a drug to lull all pain and anger, and bring 
forgetfulness of every sorrow. Whoso should 
drink a draught thereof, when it is mingled in 
the bowl, on that day he would let no tear fall 
down his cheeks, not though his father and 
mother died. . . . Medicines of such virtue had 
the daughter of Zeus, which Polydamna, the 
wife of Thon, had given her, a woman of Egypt " 
(Butcher and Lang). 

685. Unexemjpt condition; condition from 
which no exemption is given. 

694. Aspects; apparitions, objects. 

698. Vizored ; concealed or disguised, as with 
a vizor. 

700. Lickerish; tempting to the palate, but 
used in a bad sense. The word is connected 
with " lecherous." 

707, 708. The " Cynic tub " is the tub in which 
Diogenes, the cynic philosopher, used to sit, in 
scorn of the comforts and luxuries of life. 
"Budge doctors of the Stoic fur" means of 
course, in general, "Stoic philosophers;" but 
the phrase is not easy to explain. Budge has 
two meanings, "fur " (cf. Budge-row, the Lon- 
don street where furriers had their shops) and 
an adjectival meaning = "solemn," "formal." 
The second meaning would fit here exactly, but 
seems not to have been in use before the end of 
the 17th century. "Budge" was especially 
used of the fur employed in the trimming of 
academic gowns, and in writing the line Milton 
doubtless had in mind some of the solemn big- 
wigs of Cambridge whose pedantry and lifeless- 
ness he had had occasion to know- 

714. Curious ; critical, discriminating. 

719. Hutched ; stored. Hutch = bin or shed ; 
cf. rabbit-hutch. 

722. Frieze ; a coarse woolen cloth, imported 
originally from Friesland. 

732-736. Can it be that Milton believed that 
diamonds were found, like pearls, in the sea, 
or does he refer to diamonds which have been 
cast there from shipwrecks? Or is diamond 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



389 



used in a general sense for precious stones ? 
"They below," i. e. the creatures of the deep, 
has been unaccountably misunderstood as " men 
on earth " (6t /carw). 

750. Sorry grain ; dull color. 

760. Bolt her arguments; the metaphor is 
from the bolting- of flour, i. e. the sifting out 
of the bran so as to leave the flour fine and 
white. 

768-775. A rather striking statement of so- 
cialistic doctrine, considering the time and 
place. 

803-805. In allusion to the war between Jove 
and the Titans. 

808. Canon laws of our foundation; Comus 
sarcastically represents his palace as a religious 
institution, ruled by the Canon law, i. e. the se- 
ries of laws and statutes promulgated by the 
Pope and the Councils for the government of 
the church. 

817. Backward mutters of dissevering power ; 
incantations muttered backward dissolved the 
enchantments which they had produced. 

823. Soothest ; truest ; cf . forsooth, in good 
sooth. 

826-842. The story of Sabrina was a favorite 
one with poets, having been told by Drayton in 
his Polyolbion, by Warner in Albion's England, 
and by Spenser in the Faerie Queene ; all of 
these poets drew upon the account in Geoffry 
of Monmouth's History of the Britons. Milton 
tells the story in his History of England, a book 
which he completed during the last years of his 
life. Locrine, son of Brut, defeated in battle 
Humber, king of the Huns, who had invaded 
Britain. Locrine was engaged to marry the 
daughter of Corineus, a follower of Brut who 
had been made king over Cornwall ; but among 
the spoils of war taken from Humber were cer- 
tain beautiful maidens, "Estrildis, above the 
rest, passing fair, the daughter of a king in Ger- 
many ; whom Locrine, though before contracted 
to the daughter of Corineus, resolves to marry. 
But being forced and threatened by Corineus, 
whose authority and power he feared, Guen- 
dolen the daughter he yields to marry, but in 
secret loves the other: and . . . had by her 
a daughter equally fair, whose name was Sabra. 
But when once his fear was off by the death of 
Corineus, divorcing Guendolen, he makes Es- 
trildis now his queen. Guendolen, all in rage, 
departs into Cornwall, where Madan, the son 
she had by Locrine, was hitherto brought up 
by Corineus his grandfather. And gathering 
an army of her father's friends and subjects, 
gives battle to her husband by the river Sture ; 
wherein Locrine, shot with an arrow, ends his 
life. But not so ends the fury of Guendolen : 
for Estrildis, and her daughter Sabra, she 
throws into a river: and, to leave a monument 
of revenge, proclaims that the stream be thence- 
forth called after the damsel's name ; which, 
by length of time, is changed now to Sabrina, 
or Severn." It will be noticed that Milton 
uses " step-dame " loosely. 

838. Nectared lavers; baths sweetened with 
nectar. 



845. Urchin blasts ; urchin meant originally 
"hedge-hog," being connected with French he- 
risson. Evil spirits were supposed sometimes 
to take this form, and the word "urchin" 
came gradually to have the more extended 
meaning of " evil sprite " (cf. Merry Wives, iv. 
4, 49), from which its present meaning of "small 
boy " is a natural development. Urchin blasts 
means therefore " mildew or other blight sent 
by evil sprites upon grain or cattle." 

846. Shrewd ; the meaning "bad" or "ma- 
licious" is usual in Elizabethan literature, and 
survives in some modern uses of the word. 

868-882. Oceanus; god of the great Ocean- 
stream which Homer represents as encircling 
the earth. Tethys, wife of Oceanus. The 
"Carpathian wizard" is Proteus, whose home 
was the island of Carpathus, between Crete and 
Rhodes. Glaucus, a Boeotian fisherman, eating 
of a magic herb, was transformed into a sea- 
god and gifted with the power of prophecy. 
Leucothea, a daughter of Cadmus, who, to es- 
cape her husband's fury, plunged with her son 
into the sea, and was changed to a sea-goddess ; 
" lovely hands" is the Miltonic variant on the 
"fair ankles" traditionally ascribed to her. 
Her son, Melicertes, was identified by the Ro- 
mans with Portumnus, god of harbors. Thetis 
is called by Homer "the silver-footed," hence 
"tinsel-slippered." Parthenope, a sea-nymph, 
whose body was washed ashore at Naples, and 
to whom a shrine was erected there ; see Mil- 
ton's third Epigram on Leonora Baroni. Ligea 
was one of the Sirens. 

897. Printlessfeet; feet that leave no print. 

934, 935. Interpreted literally this would mean 
the head, i. e. source, of the river. Some confu- 
sion arises because Milton is thinking of the 
head of the nymph also. The purely ideal na- 
ture of the image is shown by the mention of 
"groves of myrrh and cinnamon" which fol- 
lows. 

964. Mincing ; delicately tripping. The word 
had none of its modern derogatory connotation. 
Cf. French mince, from which " mincing " 
comes. 

999-1008. The passage is saturated with Mil- 
ton's peculiar conception of Paradisaic love. 
Assyrian queen = Aphrodite, connected with 
the Phoenician Ashtaroth. 

1015. Welkin ; sky. Cf . German Wolke. 

1021. Spheary chime ; music of the spheres. 

Page 60. Lycidas. 

17. These verses are autobiographical ; see 
Introduction to Lycidas. 

10, 11. He knew himself to sing ; a few pieces 
of indifferent Latin verse have been traced to 
Edward King. 

13. Welter to the parching wind ; the verb 
" welter" renders very descriptively the help- 
less heaving and rolling motion of an object 
tossed by the swell of the sea. 

15, 16. The "Sisters of the sacred well " are 
the nine Muses of classical mythology, to whom 
the fountain of Aganippe, on Mt. Helicon, was 
sacred. On this mountain was an altar dedi- 
cated to Jove ; Milton alone is responsible for 



39° 



APPENDIX 



placing the source of the spring beneath that 
altar. 

18. Coy excuse ; " coy " had a stronger mean- 
ing then than now, approaching that of "■dis- 
dainful." Verity quotes from Ascharn, "cour- 
tiers . . . solemne, coye, big, and dangerous of 
looke." 

19. Muse ; poet ; so used frequently. 

20. Lucky words ; words of good omen, auspi- 
cious. 

28. What time the grey-fly winds ^ her sultry 
horn ; it is not known exactly what insect Mil- 
ton intended by "grey-fly." The time indi- 
cated is noon. 

29. Battening ; feeding, fattening ; usually an 
intransitive verb. Cf. Hamlet, "Batten on 
this moor." 

33. Tempered to the oaten flute ; " tempered " 
probably modifies " satyrs," not " ditties." It 
means, therefore, " swayed by the rhythm of," 
or something of the sort. 

40. Gadding vine ; the epithet is a happy one 
to describe the luxuriant wandering of the vine. 
It had not in Milton's day its present deroga- 
tory sense. 

50-55. Milton here addresses the Muses, 
whose haunts he places, for the purpose in hand, 
near the scene of King's shipwreck. The 
"steep" is either Penmsenmawr or the Druid 
sepulchres at Kerig y Druidion in Denbigh- 
shire ; Mona is the island of Anglesey, now 
bare of trees, but mentioned as covered with 
groves by poets previous to Milton, especially 
William Browne in his Britannia's Pastorals, 
and Michael Drayton in his Polyolbion. Deva, 
or the Dee, is called a "wizard stream" be- 
cause of a tradition that the shifting of the 
channel toward the Welsh or the English side 
portended good fortune to one or the other na- 
tion. 

56. Fondly ; vainly, foolishly. 

59-63. The Muse herself, for her enchanting 
son, etc. ; the Muse is Calliope, mother of Or- 
pheus, the semi-mythical Thracian poet. Sad- 
dened by the loss of his wife Eurydice, Orpheus 
refused to join in the Bacchic orgies, and was 
torn in pieces by infuriated maenads. 

67-69. As others use ; Milton is looking at the 
Cavaliers, the gay hedonists of his generation. 

70. Clear spirit; "clear" probably means 
"free from worldly taint." 

75. Blind Fury ; Atropos, not one of the Fu- 
ries, but one of the Fates ; her sisters were Clo- 
tho and Lachesis. JShe is not usually repre- 
sented as blind. 

77. Touched my trembling ears ; a gesture of 
deep significance, intended here to rebuke the 
poet and remind him of something he has for- 
gotten. Milton probably had in mind Virgil's 

Cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem 
Vellit et admonu'it. 

Notice how finely the broken construction above 
suggests the quickness of Apollo's interrup- 
tion. 

79. Glistering foil; "foil" was the term ap- 
plied to a kind of gold or silver leaf placed be- 



hind a gem to throw it into relief. Some such 
figure is here intended. 

83. Lastly ; the adverb is used emphatically, 
meaning " at the last Judgment." 

85, 86. Arethuse was a fountain in Sicily, con- 
nected traditionally with the Sicilian pastoral 
poetry, as the River Mincius was with Virgil's 
Eclogues. 

89, 90. The "herald of the sea" is Triton, 
whose business it was to summon together the 
marine deities. He is said to "come in Nep- 
tune's plea," i. e. to present Neptune's plea of 
innocence in the case of King's death. 

96. Hippotades ; iEolus, son of Hippotes. 

99. Panope ; one of the daughters of Nereus ; 
her sisters were forty-nine in number. 

100-102. This might seem to imply that King's 
vessel foundered merely because it was unsea- 
worthy. It appears from other sources that the 
vessel struck a rock during a gale. 

103. Camus ; it had long been the custom of 
the Cambridge poets to personify the river 
Cam ; " footing slow " suggests the sluggish 
motion of that stream ; " inwrought with figures 
dim" may be meant to suggest the dim tradi- 
tions connected with the ancient university. 

106. Sanguine flower; the hyacinth, which 
sprang from the blood of Hyacinthus, and was 
inscribed with the Greek exclamation of la- 
ment, ai, ai. 

109-111. The Pilot (i. e. fisherman) of the 
Galilean Lake is St. Peter, to whom was given 
the keys of the kingdom of Heaven. Dante 
gives him two keys, one gold and one silver, 
both of which admit to Heaven, Purg. X. 

119. Blind mouths ; the immense compression 
of the phrase contributes to its power of sug- 
gesting passionate indignation. The spiritual 
blindness and the gluttony of the hired minis- 
try are the two thoughts thus powerfully welded 
together. 

123. Lean and flashy songs ; unedif ying and 
insipid sermons. Flashy is not the modern 
word meaning "showy," but is from O. E. 
flasshe, a fool. It means literally " watery." 

126. Bank mist; false doctrine. 

128. Grim Wolf ivith privy paw ; an allusion 
to the Catholic conversions, which about this 
time spread much consternation among the Pu- 
ritans. 

130. Two-handed engine; this famous crux 
has been explained in numberless ways ; the 
two-handed engine has been interpreted (1) as 
the " axe that is laid unto the root of the tree," 
St. Matthew iii. 10 ; (2) as the two-handed 
sword of Revelation i. 16 ; (3) as the two 
Houses of Parliament ; (4) as the sword of St. 
Michael; (5) as the secular and the spiritual 
power, etc., etc. The obscurity of the figure 
only adds to its terror. 

136. Use ; dwell, frequent. 

142. Bathe ; early, whence " rather." origi- 
nally a comparative form of the adjective. 

1(50. Fable of Bellerus, i. e. fabled Bellerus ; 
Bellerus is a name invented by Milton from 
Bellerium, the Latin name for Land's End in 
Cornwall. He first wrote Corineus, the name 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



39 1 



of a mythical king of Cornwall in the time of 
Brut, and substituted Bellerus afterwards as 
more musical. He probably meant it to stand 
for some mythical king or giant of the region. ^ 

161. Vision of the guarded mount; St. Mi- 
chael's Mount, opposite Penzance, on which 
there were the ruins of an old Norman strong- 
hold and an ancient abbey. A craggy seat, 
looking out upon the sea, was called St. Mi- 
chael's Chair ; there the apparition of the Arch- 
angel was fabled to appear. It is to this ghostly 
guardian that Milton refers. 

162. Namancos and Bayona 1 s hold; both 
these places were in Spain, Namancos in Gali- 
cia, east of Cape Finisterre, Bayona a little 
farther south, on the sea. Verity notes that 
Namancos is given only in two editions of Mer- 
cator's Atlas, and that the later of these, pub- 
lished in England in 1636, the year before Ly- 
cidas was written, was doubtless the one Milton 
used. In that edition the site of Namancos is 
marked on the map by a drawing of a tower, 
and that of Bayona by a castle. St. Michael 
is made, in his character of guardian angel and 
warrior, to look toward Spain, England's an- 
cient enemy ; looking on the map for some defi- 
nite localities to mention, Milton's eye fell on 
these two, and he selected them, not because of 
their importance, but because of the musical 
value of the names. 

176. Unexpressive, inexpressible. Compare 
this whole passage with the close of the Epita- 
phium Damonis. The idea of the nuptial song 
is a working over of the passage in Revelation 
concerning the " marriage of the Lamb." Rev. 
xix. 6-7. 

186. Uncouth ; from Anglo-Saxon uncuts, un- 
known. It will be remembered that in 1637 
Milton was still an " unknown " poet. Perhaps 
there is also a tinge of the modern meaning. 

189. Doric lay ; cf . Sir Henry Wotton's letter 
to Milton, where he praises ascertain Doric 
delicacy in the songs." 

192. Twitched; caught up from the ground, 
or perhaps pulled closer round his shoulders 
because of the coolness of evening. 

Later Sonnets. 

Page 74. When the Assault was In- 
tended to the City. 

10-12. The story is told by Pliny, in his Natu- 
ral History, vii. 19, that Alexander the Great, 
after conquering Thebes (the city in which Pin- 
dar spent most of his life), commanded that the 
house of the poet should be spared from de- 
struction. One reason for this action was that 
Pindar had praised in his odes Alexander of 
Macedonia, an ancestor of Alexander the Great. 
Emathian is from Emathia, a province of Mace- 
donia, where the monarchy originally had its 
seat. 

Page 74. To a Virtuous Young Lady. 

2. The broad way and the green ; Matthew 
vii. 13, 14: Broad is the way that leadeth to 
destruction . . . and narrow is the way which 
leadeth unto life. 

4. Hill of Heavenly Truth ; cf . Par. Reg. II. 
217, " Seated as on the top of Virtue's Hill." 



5. See Luke x. 42 ; Ruth i. 14-17. 

8. Notice the repetition of the same rhyme- 
word as above ; purists object to this license. 

11. Hope that reaps not shame; " Hope mak- 
eth not ashamed," Romans v. 5. 

12-14. "Plutarch relates, that when the La- 
cedaemonian general Lysander took Athens 
[b. c. 404], it was proposed in a council of war 
entirely to raze the city, and convert its site 
into a desert." But while the matter was still 
undecided, " at a banquet of the chief officers, 
a certain Phocian sang some fine [verses] from 
a chorus of the Electra of Euripides ; which so 
affected the hearers, that they declared it an 
unworthy act to reduce a place, so celebrated 
for the production of illustrious men, to total 
ruin and desolation. It appears, however, that 
Lysander ordered the walls and fortifications 
to be demolished." — Warton. The verses in 
question were part of the first chorus of the 
Electra, 167 et seq. 

Speaking of Milton's learning, Johnson says : 
"The books in which his daughter, who used 
to read to him, represented him as most de- 
lighting, after Homer, which he could almost 
repeat, were Ovid's Metamorphoses and Eu- 
ripides " (Life of Milton). A copy of Euripides 
with MS. notes by Milton is extant, and one of 
his textual emendations — rjSe'w; for ijSeW in the 
Bacchae, 188 — is universally adopted. See Dr. 
Sandys's edition (1892) of the Bacchse (Cam- 
bridge Press), where in the notes on 188, 234- 
236 and 314-318 several interesting parallels be- 
tween Comus and parts of Euripides are pointed 
out. — Verity. 

Page 74. To the Lady Margaret Ley. 

6. Dishonest; disgraceful, Lat. inhonestus. 

8. Isocrates, the Athenian orator, on hearing 
of the battle of Chaeronea, B. c. 338, put an end 
to his life. The title of Milton's Areopagitica 
is taken from the Logos Areopagiticus of Iso- 
crates. 

9-10. Milton was sixteen when James Ley 
was made Lord High Treasurer. 

Page 74. On the Detraction which Fol- 
lowed upon my Writing Certain Trea- 
tises. 

1. Tetrachordon : This pamphlet was pub- 
lished in March, 1645. The title signifies 
"four-stringed," and is explained on the title- 
page: " Expositions upon the four chief places 
in Scripture which treat of marriage, or nulli- 
ties in marriage." 

4. Numbering good intellects; since, because 
of the close-weaving of its matter, form, and 
style, only intelligent persons would read it. 

7, 8. Mile-End Green ; so called because it 
lay about a mile from the centre of old London. 
Masson says, " it was a common in Milton's 
time and the favorite terminus of a citizen's 
walk." It lay in the region now called White- 
chapel. 

8, 9. The Scotch names are selected because 
the Scotch Presbyterians were most scandalized 
by the divorce pamphlets. When the sonnet 
was written the chief topic of talk was Mont- 
rose's campaign. Professor Masson says, 



39 2 



APPENDIX 



" Among Montrose's most influential adherents 
in his enterprise there were several Gordons, of 
whom the most prominent were George, Lord 
Gordon, the eldest son of the Marquis of Hunt- 
ly, and his next brother Charles Gordon, Vis- 
count Aboyne." He also says that the three 
names in line 9 all belonged to the same person, 
the younger Alexander Macdonald, called Col- 
kitto, i. e. the Left-handed, an officer of Mont- 
rose. See Scott's Legend of Montrose, chap. xv. 

11. Quintilian ; the Roman rhetorician, au- 
thor of the famous treatise De Institutione 
Oratoria. He flourished in the second half of 
the first Christian century. 

12-14. Sir John Cheek held the first profes- 
sorship of Greek at Cambridge, established by 
Henry VIII. He was afterward tutor to Ed- 
ward VI. and the young Princess Elizabeth. 
There is a special reason for the reference to 
him here ; he had been a member of a commis- 
sion appointed by Edward VI. to formulate an 
ecclesiastical code, which, among other reforms, 
advocated relaxation of the church laws of 
divorce. 

Page 75. On the Same. 

1. Clogs; sl peculiarly contemptuous tone is 
given by this word, which literally means 
weights or encumbrances put upon beasts to 
prevent them from straying. 

4-7. Latona, after the birth of her children 
Apollo and Artemis, wandering through Lycia, 
stopped to drink from a pool. Some peasants 
tried to prevent her, whereupon she changed 
them into frogs. The haughtiness of Milton is 
emphasized by the parallel. 

14. Waste of wealth and loss of blood, i. e. in 
the Civil War. 

Page 75. On the New Forcers of Con- 
science UNDER THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 

For the peculiar form of this sonnet (sonnetto 
codato) and the uses to which it was commonly 
put, see introduction, Milton's Later Sonnets. 
The following from Pattison will explain fur- 
ther : "It is of the form called ' colla coda,' 
a form which seems to have been introduced 
as early as the fifteenth century, and was much 
used by a Rabelaisian Florentine satirist who 
went by the name of Burchiello. From him 
was derived the denomination Burchielleschi, 
applied to a species of homely and familiar 
verse. This form went out of fashion during 
the sixteenth century, but was revived at the 
beginning of the seventeenth, and Milton may 
have met with sonnets of this burlesque form 
in circulation at Florence. At any rate, in this 
sonnet alone we have sufficient evidence that 
Milton went to Italian models for his sonnets." 

1, 2. In October, 1646, Parliament formally 
abolished episcopacy ("prelate lord "), having 
previously forbidden the public or private use 
of the Book of Common Prayer ("renounced 
his Liturgy "). 

3. Widowed whore plurality; Pluralism, i. e. 
the holding by the same minister of more than 
one living, without rendering service therefor, 
was as flagrant under the Presbyterian system 
as it had been under the Episcopal. 



5. Adjure the civil sword ; the Presb3 r terians 
were quite willing to call in the power of the 
state to enforce submission to their rule. 

7. Classic hierarchy; "Under the Presbyte- 
rian organization the classis is the synod or 
council composed of all the ministers and lay- 
elders of a town or district. It has certain 
powers over the ministry and religious affairs 
of the district which it represents. When Pres- 
byterianism was established in England, the 
country was divided into provinces instead of 
dioceses, and each province was subdivided ac- 
cording to classes. The province, i. e. diocese, 
of London had twelve of these classes or sy- 
nods." — Verity. 

8. MereA.S.; Adam Steward, a pamphleteer 
champion of strict Presbyterianism against In- 
dependency. He always signed his pamphlets, 
A. S. Samuel Rutherford was one of the four 
Scotch ministers who, in the Westminster As- 
sembly of Divines, drew up a Presbyterian 
scheme for England. 

12. Shallow Edwards and Scotch What W ye 
call ; Thomas Edwards, in a pamphlet entitled 
Gangraena ; or a Catalogue of many of the Er- 
rors, Heresies, Blasphemies, and pernicious 
Practices of the Sectaries of this Time (1645-46), 
had taken occasion to attack Milton for his 
views on divorce. By "Scotch what 'd 'ye 
call " is probably intended Rev. Robert Baillie, 
another Scottish member of the Westminster 
Assembly, and author of a pamphlet entitled 
Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time, in which 
Milton's theory of divorce was also animad- 
verted against. 

14. The meaning is that the Westminster As- 
sembly was "packed" with Presbyterians as 
badly as the Council of Trent (1545-63) had 
been with Roman Catholics. 

15. " More than once the Parliament had re- 
buked the over-officiousness of the Westminster 
Assembly, and reminded it that it was not 
an authority in the realm. . . . Especially in 
April, 1646, there had been a case of this kind, 
when the Commons voted certain proceedings 
of the Assembly to be a breach of privilege, 
and intimated to the Divines that a repetition 
of such proceedings might subject them indi- 
vidually to heavy punishment." — Masson. 

17. Clip your phylacteries ; i. e. rebuke your 
hypocritical pretension. Phylactery, meaning 
in the Greek, " amulet " or " safeguard," was a 
piece of parchment inscribed with passages 
from the Mosaic law, and worn by priests on 
the forehead or wrist. The size of these phy- 
lacteries came to stand as a gauge of the wear- 
er's hypocrisy. Professor Masson comments 
on this line : In its original form the line ran, 

" Crop ye as close as marginal P 's eares " : 

an allusion " to the celebrated William Prynne, 
the Lincoln's Inn Lawyer, who had been twice 
pilloried and had his nose slit and his ears cut 
off for anti-Prelatic pamphlets by sentence of 
the Star-Chamber. . . . Since his release from 
prison at the opening of the Long Parliament 
in 1640, Prynne had been a conspicuous Presby- 
terian, enforcing his views in tract after tract 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



393 



of a dry and learned kind, always with refer- 
ences to his authorities running' down the mar- 
gins of the pages. Prynne's want of ears and 
the labored margins of his pamphlets were 
subjects of popular jest ; but Milton had a spe- 
cial grudge against him on account of a refer- 
ence to himself in one of the ' marginal ' oddi- 
ties. It was clearly in good taste, however, to 
erase the allusion in the Sonnet, referring as it 
did to a cruelty unjustly endured, under a tyran- 
nical Government, by a brave, though thick- 
headed, man." 

17. Baulk; pass over, spare; an allusion to 
the punishment inflicted upon Prynne. 

19. In your charge ; in the charge which will 
be brought against you. 

20. New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large ; 
it is so etymologically, since " priest" is a con- 
traction of the Greek presbyteros. 

Page 75. To Mr. H. Lawes on his Airs. 

Title. For an account of Lawes, see opening 
note to Comus. 

1-4. A very precise and musicianly descrip- 
tion of Lawes's songs. He was content to make 
his music subordinate to the words, preserving 
their rhythm and accent with fidelity ; so that 
the poetry, not the music (very often a kind of 
recitative), was the chief element. This quality 
explains his great popularity with the poets of 
the period, many of whom, e. g. Herrick, Cart- 
wright, and Waller, had songs set to music by 
him. 

4. Midas' 1 ears ; Midas, king of Phrygia, serv- 
ing as judge between Apollo and Pan as to which 
were the better musician, gave the verdict to 
Pan, whereupon his ears were changed by 
Apollo into asses' ears. 

4. Committing; matching. 

11. Story; there is a specific reference here 
to a poem of Cartwright's, entitled The Com- 
plainte of Ariadne, which Lawes set to music. 

12-14. " Dante, on his arrival in Purgatory, 
sees a vessel approaching the shore, freighted 
with souls under the conduct of an angel, to be 
cleansed from their sins and made fit for Para- 
dise. When they are disembarked the poet 
recognizes in the crowd his old friend Casella, 
the musician. In the course of an affectionate 
dialogue, the poet requests a soothing air ; and 
Casella sings Dante's second canzone [in the] 
Convito. . . . The Italian commentators say 
that Casella, Dante's friend, was a musician of 
distinguished excellence. He must have died 
a little before the year 1300." — Warton. 

" ' If a new law takes not away from thee 
memory or use in the amorous chant which was 
wont to quiet all my wishes, let it please thee 
therewith to comfort somewhat my soul, which 
coming here with its body is so wearied.' Love, 
which discourses in my mind to me, then began 
he so sweetly, that the sweetness yet sounds 
within me. My Master [Virgil], and I, and 
that folk who were with him appeared so con- 
tent, as though naught else touched the minds 
of any. We were all fixed and intent on his 
notes." — Purgatorio, Butler's version. 

14. Milder shades ; i. e. milder than those of 



the Inferno, through which Dante and Virgil 
had just passed. 

Page 76. On the Religious Memory of 
Mrs. Catherine Thomson. 

Title. About 1650 Milton lived for a time at 
the house of a Mr. Thomson, near Charing 
Cross ; it has been conjectured that the subject 
of the present sonnet was a member of this 
family. 

10. Purple ; a word of wide application when 
Milton wrote ; any rich or lustrous color. 

Page 76. On the Lord General, Fair- 
fax. 

The sonnet was written in 1648, between 
June 13, when Fairfax laid siege to Colchester, 
and August 17, when Cromwell defeated the 
Scottish army; see note on line 8. In 1648 the 
Royalists made a fresh and final effort. There 
were "new rebellions" (line 6) in the king's be- 
half in Kent, the west of England and Wales, 
and Scotland sent an army to his aid. Defeated 
by Fairfax at Maidstone, the surviving leaders 
of the Royalists in the east retreated to Colches- 
ter, which was besieged from June 13 to August 
27. This poem therefore was prompted by, 
and surely breathes the spirit of, a national 
crisis. 

It is addressed to the commander-in-chief of 
the Parliamentary forces — Thomas, the third 
Lord Fairfax ; born 1612, died 1671. Milton 
and he were contemporaries at Cambridge, 
Fairfax being of St. John's College. 

Fairfax was distinguished by extreme per- 
sonal courage ; several of his contemporaries 
make mention of it ; Cromwell (Letter xxix.) 
specially commended his bravery at the battle 
of Naseby. Compare, too, Milton's words in 
the Second Defence, where, enumerating the 
great leaders on the side of the Commonwealth, 
he says: "Nor would it be right to pass over 
the name of Fairfax, who united the utmost 
fortitude with the utmost courage ; and the 
spotless innocence of whose life seemed to point 
him out as the peculiar favourite of Heaven." — 
Prose Works, i. 286, 287. — Verity. 

7. Hydra heads ; to slay the Lernean Hydra 
was one of the labors of Hercules. As soon as 
he cut off one head another grew in its place. 

7, 8. False North displays her broken League ; 
the Scottish army under Hamilton w T as at this 
moment entering England to support the king, 
in contravention of the Solemn League and 
Covenant. 

9. Imp; a hawking term, i. e. to put new 
feathers in. 

Page 76. To the Lord General Crom- 
well. 

This sonnet and the preceding one were for 
obvious political reasons not printed in the edi- 
tion of Milton's poems issued in 1673. They 
first appeared, inaccurately printed, in Edward 
Phillips's Life of Milton, 1694. 

Title. " The committee for the propagation of 
the gospel was a committee of the Rump Parlia- 
ment. It consisted of fourteen members, and 
had general administrative duties in church af- 
fairs, specially that of supplying spiritual desti- 



394 



APPENDIX 



tution in the parishes. The proposals of certain 
ministers were fifteen proposals offered to the 
committee by John Owen, and other well-known 
ministers, in which they asked that the preach- 
ers should receive a public maintenance." — 
Pattison. 

7. Darwen stream; referring to the battle of 
Preston, August 17, 1648. The Darwen flows 
near Preston. 

8. Dunbar field ; here, Sept. 3, 1650, Crom- 
well routed the Scottish army under Leslie. 

9. Worcester ; here Cromwell won a crowning 
victory, Sept. 3, 1651. 

Page 77. To Sir Henry Vane the 
Younger. 

First printed, ten years after its composition, 
in the Life and Death of Sir H. Vane, by 
George Sikes. Vane was forty years old when 
the sonnet was written. He had been Governor 
of Massachusetts and afterwards a leading 
member of the Long Parliament. At the Re- 
storation he was excluded from the Act of In- 
demnity, and put to death June 14, 1662. 

3, 4. The wisdom of the Senate, rather than 
the force of the Roman armies, defeated Pyr- 
rhus, king of Epirus, when he invaded Italy ; 
afterwards Hannibal the Carthaginian was re- 
pulsed, Milton affirms, by the same agency. 

12. The bounds of either sword ; the limits of 
the civil and military power. 

Page 77. On the Late Massacre in Pie- 
mont. 

4. When all our fathers worshiped stocks and 
stones ; i.e. before the Reformation, when Eng- 
land was a Catholic country. 

12. Triple Tyrant ; the Pope, so called from 
his tiara surrounded by three crowns. 

14. Babylonian Woe ; the woe which will be 
visited upon Babylon (interpreted as the Church 
of Rome) at the day of Judgment. Cf . Rev. 
xviii. 

Page 77. On his Blindness. 

2. Ere half my days ; Milton was forty-four 
when his blindness became total. He either 
speaks loosely or else expected to live to a ripe 
old age. 

3. For the parable of the talents, see Matthew 
xxv. 14-30. 

8. Fondly ; foolishly. 

12. Thousands ; i. e. of heavenly messengers. 
Page 77. To Mr. Lawrence. 

4. 5. The construction is, " Gaining what we 
may (what may be won) from the hard sea- 
son." 

6. Favonius ; the spring wind from the south- 
west. 

10-12. To the close of his life Milton kept up 
daily practice in music, especially playing on 
the organ. "Tuscan" is used in a general 
sense = Italian. 

13, 14. Spare to interpose ; abstain from inter- 
posing. 

Page 78. To Cyriack Skinner. 

1-3. Skinner's grandsire was Sir Edward 
Coke, author of the Reports and Institutes of 
the Laws of England. 

2. Themis ; goddess of Justice. 



7. Let Euclid rest, etc. ; Skinner was a mathe- 
matician and also an amateur of politics. 

8. What the Sivede intend and what the 
French ; Charles X. of Sweden was then at war 
with Poland and Russia, and Louis XIV. was 
overcoming the Spanish in the Netherlands. 

Page 78. To the Same. 

1, 2. The little touch of vanity on Milton's 
part concerning his personal appearance is char- 
acteristic. Salmasius had twitted him upon 
his "eyes guttering prevalent rheum," and he 
replied with proud asperity that "so little do 
they betray any external appearance of injury 
that they are as unclouded and bright as the 
eyes of those who see most distinctly." 

8. Bear up ; nautical term, used metaphori- 
cally. Cf. Othello, "A Turkish fleet, and 
bearing up to Cyprus." This is clearly, from 
what follows, the sense here, rather than the 
common modern one of enduring steadfastly. 

Page 78. On his Deceased Wife. 

2-4. Alcestis ; wife of Admetus, king of Phe- 
rse in Thessaly, who accepted death in her hus- 
band's stead, but was brought back to life by 
Herakles, " Jove's great son." The story is 
beautifully told in the Alcestis of Euripides. 

5, 6. The reference is to the ceremonies of 
purification after child-birth, enjoined by the 
Mosaic law. See Leviticus xii. 

10. Her face was veiled ; so also was the face 
of Alcestis when she appeared to Admetus. 

Page 89. Paradise Lost. 

Page 102, line 6. Heavenly Muse. 

Not one of the nine Muses of the classic poets, 
but the heavenly power which inspired Moses 
on Sinai and David on Zion. Milton elsewhere 
names this Muse of sacred song Urania, i. e. 
" the Heavenly." 

Page 102, line 7. Oreb. 

Oreb, or more properly Horeb, was the name 
given to the whole range of which Sinai formed 
a part. 

Page 102, line 9. In the beginning. 

This modifies " rose," not " taught." 

Page 102, line 11. Siloa's brook. 

The pool or brook of Siloa (Shiloah) was at 
the foot of Mt. Moriah, on which stood the 
temple of Jerusalem. The whole passage is 
colored by classical reminiscence, the definite 
parallel being probably with the " dark -colored 
spring" which, according to Hesiod, flowed 
from beneath the seat of Jove. It will be in- 
teresting to compare Lycidas, 15, 16. 

Page 102, line 15. The Aonian Mount. 

Helicon in Boeotia, sacred to the Muses ; 
Milton means therefore that he will surpass the 
classic poets, who drew their inspiration thence. 

Page 102, lines 20, 21. To the conception of 
the spirit of God moving upon the face of the 
deep Milton joins that of the descent of the 
Holy Ghost "in bodily shape like a dove" at 
the baptism of our Lord. 

Page 102, line 24. Argument. 

Here, as very frequently, Milton clings to the 
literal etymologic signification ; Latin argumen- 
tum = theme, subject. 

Page 102, line 25. Assert. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



395 



Vindicate. The first edition inserts "th'" 
before Eternal. 

Page 102, line 29. Grand. 

First, original ; compare grandfather. 

Page 102, lines 31, 32. The punctuation here 
given, that of all the early editions, compels us 
to take "for" in the sense "because of;" 
modern editions often insert the comma after 
"wiil" instead of after "restraint," in which 
case " for " means " except for." 

Page 103, line 57. Witnessed. 

Gave evidence of. 

Page 103, line 58. Obdurate. 

Milton invariably places the emphasis on the 
penult in this word. 

Page 103, line 59. Some late editions wrongly 
print " Angel's ken ; " ken is not a noun, but a 
verb. 

Page 103, line 68. Urges. 

Here again Milton clings to the original sig- 
nification ; Latin urgere, to afflict, to ply. 

Page 103, fine 72. Utter. 

That is, outer, the usual meaning in the seven- 
teenth century. 

Page 103, line 73. The utmost -pole. _ 

That is, the terrestrial poles projected out- 
ward through the intervening spheres to the 
Primum Mobile. See on the Cosmology of Para- 
dise Lost, p. 96. 

Page 103, line 81. The Arch-Enemy. 

Satan, in Hebrew, means " adversary." 

Page 104, line 109. The meaning is, " In what, 
if not in the determination never to yield to the 
conqueror, lies the test of not being conquered ? " 
That glory means the glory which would re- 
dound to God from Satan's submission. 

Page 104, line 144. Of force. 

Perforce. 

Page 104, line 148. Suffice. 

Satisfy, slake. 

Page 104, line 152. Gloomy deep. 

Chaos. 

Page 104, line 157. Cherub. 

This word did not have in Milton's day its 
present diminutive force. 

Page 104, line 167. Fail. 

Latin, fallor : " If I mistake not." 

Page 105, line 198. Briar -eos, Typhon. 

Briareos was one of the Titans, Typhon one 
of the giants ; the latter are here called " earth- 
born," because they were the offspring of Ura- 
nus and Ge (Earth). It was the giants only 
who " warred on Jove." 

Page 105, line 199. Den by ancient Tarsus. 

An elaboration of a line of iEschylus, in 
which Typhon is described as living in a " Cili- 
cian den." Tarsus was the capital of Cilicia. 

Page 105, line 204. Night-founder' d. 
. Benighted, — brought to a stand by the com- 
ing on of night. 

Page 105, line 235. Sublimed. 

Changed from a solid to a vapor by the action 
of heat. 

Page 105, line 257. All but less than.^ 

This is slightly illogical, the meaning being 
" only less than," or " all but equal to." 

Page 106, line 266. Astonished. 



Latin extonare, to thunder. Astonished ap- 
proaches the meaning " thunder-struck." 

Oblivious. Used in the now unusual causa- 
tive sense of " inducing forgetfulness." 

Page 106 line 289. Fesole. 

Now Fiesole, a hill on the outskirts of Flor- 

Page 106, line 290. Valdarno. 

The valley of the river Arno, in which Flor- 
ence lies. 

Pagel06, line 294. Ammiral. 

Admiral, here transferred to the ship in 
which he sails, the flag-ship. 

Page 10(5, line 299. Nathless. *- 

Nevertheless. 

Page 106, line 304. Scattered sedge. '"* 

The Hebrew name for the Red Sea signifies 
Sea of Sedge. 

Page 106, line 305. Orion. 

Orion, in classic myth, was a great hunter, 
and when placed among the stars, was given 
a girdle, sword, and club ; hence the epithet 
"armed." 

Page 106, line 307. Busiris. 

Busiris, really an earlier king than Pharaoh, 
is here made to stand for him. 

Page 107, line 353. Rhene. 

Rhine: the older form has survived in the 
adjective Rhenish. 

Page 107, line 353. Danaw. 

Danube. The allusion is to the invasion of 
the Roman Empire by the Goths and Vandals. 

Page 107, lines 364-373. These lines are a pre- 
lude for the remarkable passage which follows, 
in which Milton, by a bold invention, links the 
Biblical narrative with pagan myth and legend. 

Page 107, line 392. Moloch. 

Called in Scripture the "abomination of the 
children of Amnion ; " he was a nature-god, 
typifying the destructive power of the sun. 
' Page 107, lines 397-399. 

Rabba was the capital of the Ammonites ; 
Argob a district of the mountain range of Ba- 
shan, here called Basan, and Arnon a boundary 
river to the east of Jordan. Here, as through- 
out the following two hundred lines, Milton 
uses proper names for their grandiloquent sound 
and vague but rich suggestion, rather than for 
any definite purpose of conveying information. 

Page 107, lines 407-41 1._ 

The towns and mountains mentioned here all 
lie on or near the Dead Sea, called the " asphal- 
tick pool " from the bitumen or asphaltus which 
it contains. Seon was king of the Amorites. 

Page 107, line 413. Israel in Sitti7n. 

See Numbers xxv. 

Page 108, line 415. Orgies. 

Used in the classic sense of rites, observances. 

Page 108, line 446. Thammuz. 

An important figure in Phoenician mythology. 
He was slain by a boar in Lebanon, but came 
to life again each spring, his death and resusci- 
tation symbolizing the destructive forces of 
winter and the quickening forces of spring. 
When the river Adonis became reddened by 
the mud brought down from Lebanon by the 
spring torrents, it was believed to be the flow- 



39 6 



APPENDIX 



ing afresh of Thammuz's wounds which caused 
the change of color. 

Page 108, line 462. Dagon. 

A sea-god, the national deity of the Philis- 
tines, who dwelt along the seashore. See 1 Sam- 
uel v. 

Page 108, line 484. Rebel king. 

Jerohoam, who rebelled against his brother 
Rehoboam ; he made two calves of gold, set- 
ting one in Bethel and the other in Dan. 

Page 108, line 487. When he passed. 

That is, when Israel passed out from bondage 
in Egypt. 

Page 108, line 488. Equalled. 

Used in the sense of levelled, struck down. 
The reference is to the tenth plague, the smit- 
ing of " all the first-born in the land of Egypt. 
. . . and all the first-born of cattle." 

Page 109, line 495. EWs sons. 

See 1 Samuel ii. 12-17. 

Page 109, line 502. Flown. 

Flushed. 

Page 109, lines 503-505. 

For the allusion, see Genesis xix., Judges 
xix. 

Page 109, line 509. Gods. 

Uranus (Heaven) and Ge (Earth) had as off- 
spring the Titans. One of these, Cronos (Saturn 
in Roman mythology), dethroned his father, 
and was in turn dethroned by his son Zeus 
(Jove), whose mother was Rhea. Miltonjs 
scholarship seems at fault here in supposing 
that there was an individual giant named Titan, 
who, instead of Uranus, was father of the 
twelve Titans. 

Page 109, line 516. Middle air. 

Mr. Verity has recently pointed out that this 
phrase was not loosely used by Milton to mean 
all the air between Heaven and Earth, but that 
it signifies merely the middle one of the three 
belts of air which were believed to be super- 
imposed one upon the other. The middle belt, 
known to scientists of the seventeenth century 
as "media regio," reached from the point 
where the reflected rays of the sun lose their 
force upward to the tops of the highest moun- 
tains. 

Page 109, line 517. Delphian cliff'. 

A part of Mt. Parnassus, and seat of the fa- 
mous oracle of Apollo. 

Page 109, line 518._ Dodona. 

At Dodona, in Epirus, there was an oracle of 
Zeus. 

Page 109, line 521. The Celtic. 

The Celtic land — a Greek idiom. 

Page 109, line 523. Damp. 

Depressed. 

Page 109, line 528. Recollecting. 

Re-collecting. 

Page 109, line 546. Orient. 

Bright, lustrous. The word seems to have 
been a technical jeweller's term. 

Page 109, line 550. The Dorian mood. 

Grave and stern, in contrast with the softer 
Lydian mode. 

Page 109, line 551. Recorder. 

A kind of flageolet. 



Page 110, line 568. Traverse. 

Across. 

Page 110, line 581. Armoric knights. 

Knights of Brittany. Aspramont in Pro- 
vence, Montalban in Languedoc, and Trebisond 
in Cappadocia, were all famous in the annals of 
chivalry ; Damasco (Damascus) was the scene 
of many heroic combats during the Crusades. 
In mentioning Maroeco Milton had in mind the 
struggles between the Spaniards and the Moors. 
It is indicative of his subtle feeling for names 
that he should use the form Damasco when 
speaking of the mediaeval, and Damascus when 
speaking of the Biblical city. 

Page 110, line 603. Considerate. 

Thoughtful. 

Page 110, line 605. Remorse and passion. 

Remorse approaches the meaning of pity ; 
passion here means strong emotion, not anger. 

Page 110, line 611. Faithful how they stood. 

Supply the verb from line 605. His eye cast, 
etc., to behold how faithful they stood in spite 
of all. 

Page 111, line 674. Sulphur. 

In the seventeenth century and earlier, sul- 
phur was believed to be the formative element 
of metals. 

Page 111, line 686. Centre. 

Here, as elsewhere, "centre" means the 
Earth, the centre of the terrestrial universe, 
according to the Ptolemaic system of astron- 
omy. 

Page 111, line 694. Works of Memphian kings. 

The Pyramids. 

Page 112, line 737. Hierarchy, orders. 

Milton accepted the mediaeval division of all 
celestial beings into three Hierarchies, each 
comprising three Orders or Choirs. The lowest 
Hierarchy comprised the Angels, Archangels, 
and Principalities ; the next higher the Powers, 
Virtues, and Dominations ; the highest the 
Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim. 

Page 112, line 738. His name. 

In Greece it was Hephaestus ; in Italy (the 
Ausonian land) he was called Mulciber, i. e. the 
welder, from mulcere, to soften. He was thrown 
from Olympus for taking the part of Juno in a 
dispute with Jove. 

Page 113, line 795. Recess. 

Retirement. 

Page 113, line 797. Frequent. 

Crowded, numerous. 

Page 113. Book II. 

Page 113, line 2. Ormus. 

Now Hormuz, an island in the Persian Gulf ; 
in the seventeenth century a rich emporium of 
the East India trade. 

Page 113, line 9. Success. 

Issue, outcome. 

Page 114, lines 76-77. Descent and fall to us 
is adverse. 

It was one of the tenets of the scholastic phi- 
losophers that angels are not subject to the or- 
dinary natural laws, such as that of gravitation. 
Their tendency is upward, not downward. 

Page 114, line 106. Denounced. 

Indicated, threatened. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



397 



Page 115, lines 151-153. 

The meaning is : Even granted that death is 
to be desired, who knows whether God has the 
power or the willingness to destroy angelic sub- 
stances ? 

Page 115, lines 199-202. 

The meaning seems to be, " The strength we 
have will enable us to bear the punishment of 
our deeds, just as it enabled us to perform those 
deeds ; and the law which ordains that we 
should do so is not unjust ; it would have been 
well to make up our minds to this endurance 
when we entered upon so hazardous an enter- 
prise as rebellion. " 

Page 117, line 278. Sensible. 

Sense. Compare line 97. 

Page 117, line 292. Field. 

Battle. 

Page 117, line 329. What. 

To what end, why. 

Page 117, line 330. Determined. 

Made an end of, undone. 

Page 118, line 387. Infernal States. 

So in Troilus and Cressida, iEneas, address- 
ing the assembled warriors, says, " Hail all you 
states of Greece." 

Page 118, line 407. Uncouth. 

Used here with its original meaning of " un- 
known," "strange." 

Page 118, line 409. Vast Abrupt. 

That portion of Chaos separating the Earth 
from Hell, which space is apparently conceived 
of as a sort of chasm or gulf. 

Page 118, line 410. Arrive the happy Isle. 

Preposition omitted after verb of motion. 

Page 119, line 439. Unessential . 

Having no real essence or being, mere vacu- 
ity and negation. 

Page 119, line 457. Intend. 

Consider. 

Page 119, line 468. Lest, from his resolution 
raised. 

Lest, encouraged by his firm bravery. 

Page 119, line 483. 

Understand before "lest" some phrase of 
transition, such as " I say this." 

Page 119, lines 488-495. _ 

This characteristic simile shows how thor- 
oughly Milton had absorbed the spirit of classic 
imagery. The elaborate working out of the fig- 
ure into a detached and self-sufficient picture, 
common in Homer and Virgil, is foreign to the 
spirit of English poetry. 

Page 120, line 508. Paramount. 

Lord, chief. Old French, paramont, " at the 
top," "above." 

Page 120, line 512. Globe. 

To be taken literally ; angelic bodies, moving 
with ease through the air, would as naturally 
arrange themselves in the form of a globe as 
human bodies in the form of a compact circle. 

Page 120, line 513. Horrent. 

Bristling. 

Page 120, line 518. Explained. 

Filled. 

Page 120, line 570. Gross. 

Large. 



Page 121, lines 575-580. 

Milton borrows details from the classical con- 
ception of Hades. The characterization of the 
four infernal rivers corresponds to the etymolo- 
gic signification of their names, which come 
from Greek verb stems, meaning respectively 
"to hate," "to sorrow," "to lament," and 
" to burn." 

Page 121, line G41. The wide Ethiopian. 

" Ethiopian Sea," Indian Ocean. 

Page 122, line 665. Lapland. 

Long held to be the especial home and ren- 
dezvous of witches. 

Page 122, line 688. Goblin. 

Used in the generic sense of demon or fiend. 

Page 122, line 709. Ophiuchus. 

A large constellation of the northern hemi- 
sphere. 

Page 124, line 842. Buxom. 

Here used properly, in the sense of " bend- 
ing," "yielding." 

Page 125, line 889. Redounding. 

Rolling in billows ; Latin, redundare, to over- 
flow. 

Page 125, line 904. Barca, Gyrene. 

Cities of northern Africa. 

Page 125, line 927. Vans. 

Wings, from Italian vanni. 

Page 126, line 939. Syrtis. 

The name of some sandbanks and quicksands 
off the north coast of Africa ; it came to be 
used generally for any region of the sort. 

Page 126, line 945. Pursues the Arimaspian. 

The Arimaspians, according to the legend, 
were a one-eyed people of Scythia, who fought 
constantly with the griffins, half-eagle, and 
half-lion, for the gold of the mines which these 
monsters guarded. 

Page 127, line 1017. When Argo passed. 

The allusion is to the voyage of Jason to Col- 
chis in search of the Golden Fleece. His boat 
was named the Argo. The " justling rocks " 
are the Symplegades, which moved together to 
crush boats sailing between. 

Page 127, line 1029. Utmost Orb. 

The outermost of the ten concentric spheres 
surrounding the earth. See Introduction, on 
the Cosmology of Paradise Lost. 

Page 127, line 1043. Holds. 

Makes for. 

Page 127. Book III. 

Page 127, line 1. Hail, holy Light. 

Hitherto the scene has been laid amid the 
darkness of Hell and the obscure confusion of 
Chaos ; now it mounts into the cheerful sun- 
illumined spaces of our universe and into the 
clear radiance of Heaven. The reference which 
Milton makes in this " Hymn to Light " to his 
own blindness gains from the context both pa- 
thos and dignity. 

Page 127, line 3. Express thee unblamed. 

The meaning is, " May I without inciirring 
blame call thee coeternal with God ? " In the 
lines that follow he seeks to justify the epithet. 

Page 128, line 7. Hearst thou rather. 

Dost thou prefer to be called. 

Page 128, line 1(5. Utter and middle Darkness. 



398 



APPENDIX 



Utter darkness, outer darkness, Hell ; mid- 
dle darkness, Chaos. 

Page 128, line 21. Rare. 

Seldom accomplished. 

Page 128, line 25. Drop serene. 

A technical term, Latin gutta serena, for the 
affection of the optic nerve which caused Mil- 
ton's blindness. 

Page 128, line 32. Nor sometimes forget. 

That is, " And often recall." 

Page 128, lines 35, 36. 

Thamyris, an obscure Thracian bard, men- 
tioned by Homer (Iliad, ii. 595-600) ; Ma>om- 
des, Homer, so called from Maeonia, the ancient 
name of Lydia ; Tiresias, the blind Theban 
seer who figures in the (Edipus Tyrannus of 
Sophocles ; Phineus, a blind king and prophet 
of Thrace. 

Page 128, line 75. Without firmament. _ 

Without sky, because the sky is inside the 
Primum Mobile, or opaque outer shell on which 
Satan is about to alight. 

Pagel29, line 93. Glozing. 

Deceitfully flattering. 

Page 129, line 107. What pleasure. 

The meaning seems to be, " What pleasure 
could I receive from Man's obedience, if both 
his reason, by which he is enabled to discern 
the right, and his will, by which he is enabled 
actively to follow it, were deprived of free play 
and made the passive instruments of neces- 
sity ? " 

Page 129, line 143. Which uttering. 

Expressing in^his countenance compassion, 
love, and grace. 

Page 130, line 216. Charity so dear. 

So costly, involving so much sacrifice. 

Page 130, line 219. Patron.^ 

The use of this word in its Latin sense of 
" defender at law " is in keeping with the legal 
wording of the passage. 

Page 130, line 231. Unprevented. 

Used in the difficult sense of " unanticipated 
by prayer or effort ; " from Latin prosvenire, to 
come in advance, to anticipate. 

Page 131, line 299. Giving to. 

Submitting to. 

Page 132, line 371. Part. 

Part-song, made up of treble, bass, and mean. 

Page 133, line 389. Transfused. 

Diffused, poured out. 

Page 133, line 416. Above the Starry Sphere. 

Heaven is not only above the starry sphere 
(the eighth sphere, or sphere of the fixed stars), 
but also above the crystalline sphere and the 
Primum Mobile. From the point of view of 
the earthly singer, however, it is natural to 
think of the sphere of the stars as the limit of 
the universe. 

Page 133, lines 418-421. 

The opaque " convex "of the Primum Mo- 
bile shuts in the nine luminous orbs or spheres 
that encircle the earth, protecting them from 
the violent tempests, and extremes of heat and 
cold, of Chaos. 

Page 133, lines 431-439. 

The geography of this passage has caused 



much dispute among commentators. Imaus 
has been usually taken to mean the Himalayas, 
and in this case the bird in flying toward the 
sources of the Ganges would not pass over Seri- 
cana, which was supposed to occupy the north- 
west corner of the Chinese Empire. The diffi- 
culty has been recently solved by Mr. Verity, 
who finds in the English edition of Mercator's 
Atlas, published in the first half of the seven- 
teenth century, and doubtless well known to 
Milton, a range of mountains marked Imaus 
Mons, running north and south from the north- 
east corner of the modern Afghanistan to the 
Frozen Ocean. "The northern part of Imaus 
Mons," says Mr. Verity, "does 'bound' the 
Tartar, separating his country from Russia ; 
and a vulture starting from this northern part 
and flying southward to the Ganges would pass 
over the northwest plains of the Chinese Em- 
pire. Judged, therefore, from the seventeenth- 
century standpoint the passage is quite cor- 
rect." 

Page 133, line 439. Their cany waggons. 

Todd quotes from Staunton's Embassy to 
China, published in 1797, " Those cany wagons 
are small carts, or double barrows, of bamboo, 
with one large wheel between them. When 
there is no wind ... it is drawn by a man, 
who is regularly harnessed to it, while another 
keeps it steady from behind. . . . The sail, 
when the wind is favorable, saves the labor of 
the former of these two men." 

Page 134, line 463. Hither. 

To the outer surface of the Primum Mobile. 

Page 134, line 467. Sennaar. 

Usually written Shinar. Milton always avoids 
the sound sh in proper names ; cf . Siloa for Shi- 
loah, Beersaba for Beersheba. 

Page 134, line 473. Cleombrotus. 

A philosopher of Ambracia in Epirus, who 
was induced by reading Plato's description of 
Elysium to drown himself, in order to achieve 
a happier existence. 

Page 134, line 475. White, black, and grey. 

Milton mentions three of the four great mo- 
nastic orders, the Carmelites, the Franciscans, 
and the Dominicans, named in England respect- 
ively White, Gray, and Black Friars, from the 
colors of their dress. The Augustinian or Aus- 
tin Friars he does not mention. 

Page 134, line 481. The planets seven^ 

In ascending from the earth, the spirits would 
pass in order through the spheres of Mercury, 
Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the 
Moon, all which Milton groups together as 
"the planets seven," then through the sphere 
of the Fixed Stars (understand "stars" after 
" fixed "), then through the crystalline sphere, 
the swaying back and forth or uncertain motion 
(balance) of which was supposed to cause the 
precession of the equinoxes, technically known 
as "trepidation," and lastly through the Pri- 
mum Mobile (first moved) to the Fool's Para- 
dise on the outside of the universe. 

Page 134, line 502. Degrees. 

Steps. 

Page 134, line 516. Mysteriously was meant. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



399 



Had a symbolic meaning. 

Page 134, lines 518-522. 

The stairs extended down through the open- 
ing in the outer or tenth sphere to the ninth or 
crystalline sphere, which was conceived of as a 
sea of limpid waters, corresponding to "the 
waters that be above the heavens," of Scrip- 
ture. Spirits rising from the earth would of 
course have to pass this sphere. 

Page 135, lines 557-501. 

He views the universe first from west to east 
of the Zodiac, then from north to south. The 
"fleecy star," Aries, the Ram, is said to bear 
Andromeda because Andromeda lies above it 
in the heavens. 

Page 135, line 562. The World'' s first region. 

The upper of the three layers or strata into 
which mediaeval physicists believed the air to 
be divided. See note to line 5105, Book I. Sa- 
tan really descends through the Primum Mobile 
and the crystalline sphere to the sphere of the 
Fixed Stars, as is shown by the lines which fol- 
low. In traversing this sphere he must " wind 
his oblique way" in order to avoid the "innu- 
merable stars " with which it is studded. 

Page 135, line 575. Hard to tell, 

Milton says it is hard to tell whether in going 
toward the Sun Satan is going "by centre" 
(i. e. toward the centre of the universe) or 
"eccentric " (i. e. away from the centre), and 
this has been interpreted as a statement of 
doubt as to whether the sun is or is not the cen- 
tre of the universe. It seems more probable 
that he still thinks of the earth as the centre, 
and uses the phrase " by centre or eccentric" 
still further to emphasize the deviousness of 
Satan's course implied in "up or down" and 
" oblique way." 

Page 135, line 598. In Aaron s breast-plate. 

See Exodus xxviii. 

Page 135, lines (502-605. Bind volatile Hermes. 

That is, solidify and fix mercury (Latin, Mer- 
curius = Greek, Hermes). Proteus, according 
to the legend, when seized by Menelaus, trans- 
formed himself into various shapes to escape 
giving prophecy, but at last was compelled to 
return to his native form. Milton likens the 
changes which a chemical substance undergoes 
in the alembic (limbec) of the natural philoso- 
pher to these supernatural transformations. 

Page 136, line 606. What wonder then. 

What wonder if here (in the sun) fields 
breathe forth that " elixir vitae " which philoso- 
phers have sought to find in order to prolong 
human life? The " elixir vita? " was believed 
to exist in the form of " potable gold," to which 
line 608 contains a reference. 

Page 136, line 643. For speed succinct. 

That is, girt up, so as to leave the limbs free. 

Page 137, line 716. This ethereal quintessence. 

Besides the four elements known directly to 
the senses, earth, water, air, and fire, Aristotle 
speaks of a fifth element, ether, which fills the 
celestial spaces and of which the stars and the 
spheres are made. Milton says that at the cre- 
ation this element flew upward, spirited or ani- 
mated with something that we can conceive of 



as whirlpools of denser material, which finally 
turned to stars. The theory has striking ele- 
ments in common with the nebular hypothesis 
of modern cosmology. 

Page 137, line 721. Walls this Universe. 

The rest of the ether which Remained after 
the stars were made went to r*jrm the outer 
sphere of the universe, the Primum Mobile. 

Page 137, line 730. Her countenance triform. 

The moon had three mythic embodiments, 
Diana, Luna, and Hecate, corresponding to her 
three phases, crescent, full, and waning. Hence 
the epithet, triforirtis, which Milton borrows. 

Page 137, line 742. Niphates. 

A mountain of Armenia, on the borders of 
Assyria. 

Page 138. Book IV. 

Page 138, line 1. O for that warning voice. 

See Revelation xii. 7-12. 

Page 138, line 10. The accuser. 

" Devil " is from the Greek Sia/3oAo?, slanderer 
or accuser. The reference is to Revelation xii. 
10, where Satan comes to earth as the "accuser 
of the brethren." 

Page 138, lines 32-41. 

These lines were written as early as 1642, as 
the opening verses of a contemplated tragedy. 

Page 138, line 39. Above thy sphere. 

Since the sphere of the sun was only fourth 
in the upward succession of the Ptolemaic 
spheres. Lucifer had dwelt in the Empyrean. 

Page 139, line 115. Thrice changed with pale. 

Ire, envy, and despair paled his face thrice 
with their successive agitations. 

Page 139, line 123. Couched. 

Coupled. 

Page 140, line 132. Eden, where delicious Para- 
dise. 

Eden is the whole region where Man was de- 
stined to dwell. Paradise a blissful garden set 
apart on its eastern side. See below, lines 208- 
215. 

Page 140, line 162. Sabean odours. 

From Saba, a city of Araby Felix. 

Page 140, line 168. Asmodeus with the fishy 
fume. 

Asmodeus, an evil spirit, in love with a Jew- 
ish maiden Sara, was driven from her by the 
smell of a fish which Raphael had instructed 
Tobias, her betrothed, to burn. Fleeing into 
Egypt, Asmodeus was there bound by an angel. 
See Apocryphal Book of Tobit. The allusion 
seems forced. 

Page 140, line 170. With a vengeance. 

Almost in the modern cant sense. 

Page 140, line 193. 

Compare Lycidas, 113-131. 

Page 140, line 211. From Auran eastward. 

Auran, a district of Syria, lying south of 
Damascus; Seleucia, a city on the Tigris near 
the modern Bagdad. The region indicated is, 
roughly speaking, Syria and Mesopotamia. 

Page 141, line 223. Southward through Eden. 

The reader is to imagine a great river flowing 
south through Eden until it reaches the table- 
land upon which Paradise is placed. Under 
this it passes. A portion of its waters are 



400 



APPENDIX 



drawn up in the form of springs or fountains to 
water the garden ; these rills, after flowing 
through Paradise, fall down the southern slope 
of the table-land, to join again the river, which 
here emerges from its subterranean passage. 

Page 141, line 239. Mazy error. 

Latin errare, to wander. The present literal 
meaning of the word was originally metaphorie. 

Page 141, line 255. Irriguous. 

Well-watered, full of rivulets. 

Page 141, line 268. Not that fair .field , etc. 

This- heaping up of rich allusion is very char- 
acteristic of Milton. The field of Enna was in 
Sicily. The spring of Castaly here spoken of is 
not the famous one upon Mt. Parnassus, but 
one in the vicinity of Antioch in Syria, near the 
sacred grove of Daphne, where the river Oron- 
tes flows into the Mediterranean. The Nyseian 
isle was in the Lake Tritonis, in northern Africa 
(Milton's version of the legend of Bacchus's 
parentage differs from the classic one). Mount 
Amara, according to old tradition, was a moun- 
tain in central Abyssinia, a day's journey high, 
on the summit of which were thirty-four palaces, 
where the princes of Abyssinia were educated in 
seclusion. Ethiop line = tropic of Cancer. 

Page 142, lines 309-10. 

Supply the words "when so" between re- 
ceived and yielded. 

Page 142, line 323. Adam the goodliest man, 
etc. 

Observe the inconsistency of statement ; Mil- 
ton had classical precedent for the idiom. 

Page 142, line 332. Compliant boughs. 

There is a union of the literal and derived 
meaning in the use of the adjective. 

Page 142, line 348. Insinuating. 

See last note. 

Page 142, line 352. Ruminating. 

Entirely literal, i. e. chewing the cud. 

Page 144, line 486. Individual. 

Latin individuus= inseparable. 

Page 144, line 492. General mother. 

" Common" is the expected word._ 

Page 145, line 537. Sly circumspection. 

Literal meaning is probably here uppermost ; 
perhaps the meaning is that Satan looked back 
over his shoulder as he walked away. 

Page 145, line 541. With right aspect. 

That is, directly in front. 

Page 145, line 557. Thwarts. 

Shoots athwart. 

Page 146, line 592. Whether the Prime Orb, 
etc. 

This is one of the passages where Milton hesi- 
tates between the old Ptolemaic and the new 
Copernican astronomy ; Prime Orb is the Pri- 
mum Mobile, the outermost of the ten circum- 
terrestrial spheres. See Introduction, on the 
cosmology of the poem. 

Page 147, line 660. Milton's lack of humor 
may be detected in the extreme formality of 
these modes of address. 

Page 148, line 716. Unwiser son. 

Epimetheus, who married Pandora, sent by 
Jupiter to avenge the theft of fire from Heaven 
by Prometheus. Prometheus was "wiser" 



than his brother Epimetheus, because he re- 
fused her. 

Page 148, fine 776. Shadowy cone. 

The shadow of the earth thrown out into 
space is, of course, cone-shaped. The time indi- 
cated is half way between sunset and midnight. 

Page 148, line 785. Half wheeling, etc. 

Left, to shield-hand ; right, to spear-hand. 

Page 149, line 804. Inspiring. 

Breathing in. 

Page 150, line 911. However. 

That is, however he may. 

Page 151, line 931. 

Supply "as to " or " concerning " after "in- 
experience." 

Page 151, line 971. Limitary. 

A word of Milton's coining ; it means " set to 
guard certain limits," in allusion to Gabriel's 
phrase above, fine 964. 

Page 151, line 980. Ported spears. 

Held, as Professor Masson explains, in both 
hands, and slanted to the left, ready to be 
brought down to the charge at the word of 
command. 

Page 151, line 987. Unremoved. 

Unmoved or unremovable ; it is difficult to 
say which is meant. 

Page 151, line 997. Golden scales. 

The constellation Libra ; a reminiscence of 
the golden scales in which Jupiter weighed the 
issue of events. 

Page 152. Book V. 

Page 152, line 5. The only sound. 

An inverted construction ; only the sound. 

Page 154, line 142. Discovering. 

Used actively. 

Page 154, line 150. Numerous. 

Rhythmic, having the quality of number. 

Page 154, line 177. Five other wandering 
Fires. 

Really four, — Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and 
Saturn, which, with Venus, the Sun, and the 
Moon, already addressed, made up the seven 
so-called "planets" of the Ptolemaic scheme. 
Uranus and Neptune were discovered later. 
Wandering, because of their irregular motions. 

Page 154, line 178. Not without song. 

The spheres revolving upon one another were 
thought to give forth harmonious sounds, which 
together made up the " music of the spheres," 
so often referred to by the poets. 

Page 154, line 180. Elements . . . that in qua- 
ternion run. 

Earth, air, fire, and water, continually chan- 
ging in fourfold combination. 

Page 155, line 214. Pampered boughs. 

It is hard to say whether or not Milton had in 
mind the derivation of this word, French pam- 
pre, Latin pampinus, a vine-leaf. Perhaps it is 
to be taken much in the modern sense, i. e. 
richly nurtured by the soil. 

Page 155, line 223. Seven-times-wedded maid. 

Sara. See note above, Book IV., line 168. 

Page 155, line 249. Ardours. 

A synonym for Seraphim, which is from a 
Hebrew verb meaning to burn. Dante uses ar- 
dor i in the same sense. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



401 



Page 156, line 261. The glass of Galileo. 

The telescope was still of sufficiently recent 
invention to be an object of wonder. 

Page 156, line 272. Gazed. 

Gazed at. 

Page 156, line 273. Phoznix . . . that sole 
bird. 

Only one specimen of this fabulous bird was 
supposed to exist at any given time. After 500 
years of life it flew to the temple of the sun at 
Heliopolis (not Thebes, as Milton states) to die. 
From its ashes sprang its successor. 

Page 156, line 274. Sky-tinctured grain. 

Grain has two meanings, of which only one 
has survived in common use. One refers to 
texture, as the grain of wood, one to color, as 
in the phrase " dyed in grain," which originally 
meant dyed in the durable dark-red of the coc- 
cus insect (Latin granum, grain or seed, in ap- 
plication to the seed-like bodies of this insect). 
For further discussion, see Lectures on the 
English Language, by George P. Marsh. It is 
impossible to say wbich use Milton intends. 

Page 157, line 341. Ale i nous. 

King of Phaeacia (perhaps modern Corcyra), 
to which Odysseus came in his wanderings. 

Page 157, line 345. Meaths. 

Greek i*e0v, drink ; English, mead. 

Page 157, line 349. Unfumed. 

Unexhaled. 

Page 157, line 396. No fear lest dinner cool. 

The prosaic suggestion jars curiously. 

Page 15S, lines 415-426. 

Milton is here rehearsing certain theories of 
the scholastic philosophy, derived from Cicero's 
De Natura Deorum and other sources. 

Page 158, line 438. What redounds. 

What is superfluous. 

Page 150, lines 488-89. Discursive or intui- 
tive. 

Discursive reason is that which arrives at its 
conclusion by comparison and reflection, intui- 
tive reason is immediate insight ; the first 
proper to man, the second to angelic beings. 

Page 160, line 577. 

Here, as Professor Masson observes, we have 
the true chronological beginning of the poem. 
This method of causing previous events to be 
narrated during a lull in the action, is a con- 
vention of the epic form. 

Page 160, line 578. These heavens. 

The ten circum-terrestrial spheres, not the 
Empyrean, or Heaven of Heavens, where the 
angels abode. 

Page 160, line 583. Heaven's great year. 

Some immense cycle, corresponding to the 
earthly year ; pei'haps Milton had in mind 
Plato's great year of the Heavens," measured 
by a complete revolution of all the spheres from 
a given relation to each other until they again 
assumed the same relation. 

Page 161, line 671. His next subordinate. 

After his fall known as Beelzebub. 

Page 161, lines 688-89. Where we possess the 
quarters of the North. 

In Isaiah xiv. 12, 13, Lucifer is represented as 
saying, "I will sit upon the mount of the con- 



gregation, in the sides of the north." From this 
a tradition arose that Lucifer possessed the 
north part of Heaven as his peculiar domain. 

Page 163, line 799. Much less for this. 

Warburton explains these words by making 
" for this " refer to the preceding phrase "in- 
troduce law and edict." The meaning then be- 
comes, "'much less for the end of introducing 
law and edict on us, can any one presume to be 
our Lord." At best the passage is puzzling and 
obscure. 

Page 164. Book VI. 

Page 164, line 19. In product. 

In readiness. Latin procingere, to gird in 
front, as a soldier draws tight his belt before 
action. 

Page 165, line 62. Quadrate. 

Either square or cube, as the celestial armies 
were not subject to the physical laws which 
reign on earth. 

Page 165, line 84. With boastful argument por- 
trayed. 

Emblazoned with boastful mottoes or devices. 

Page 165, line 93. Hosting. 

Mustering. 

Page 166, line 113. Explores. 

Not in open speech, but in silent musing. 

Page 166, line 115. Realty. 

Some editors have changed this word to 
"lealty." No change is necessary; "realty" 
is from the Italian "reale," which sometimes 
means " loyal." 

Page 169, lines 318-19. Not need repeat, as not 
of power, at once. 

I. e. a stroke such as would not need immedi- 
ate repetition because of its being unpowerf ul. 

Page 169, line 32(5. Shared. 

Cut open. 

Page 169, line 329. Griding. 

Smiting ; Old English "gird," to strike. 

Page 169, line 381. And from just . . . 

From a just cause. 

Page 170, line 429. Of future. 

In future. 

Page 171, line 514. Adusted. 

From Latin "adurere," to scorch. 

Page 171, line 518. Found. 

Forge. 

Page 172, line 541. Sad. 

Used in the old sense, sober or earnest. 

Page 172, line 544. Borne even or high. 

On a level with the breast or above the head. 

Page 172, line 553. Impaled. 

Fenced in. 

Page 172, line 555. At interview. 

Gazing at each other ; no idea of speech is 
intended. 

Page 172, line 581. Amused. 

At muse, musing. 

Page 172, line 605. Tire. 

Volley ; cf . French tirer, to shoot. 

Page 173, lines 623-24. Amused them all and 
stumbled many. 

Cf. line 581, note. Both amused and stum- 
bled are used in a double sense. 

Page 174, line 698. Dangerous to the main. 
Dangerous to the whole creation. 



402 



APPENDIX 



Page 177. Book VII. 

Page 177, line 19. The Aleianjield. 

According to the myth, Bellerophon, having 
fallen from his horse Pegasus, wandered for 
the rest of his life in these fields. The name 
signifies " field of wandering." Iliad vi. 201. 

Page 177, line 33. Bacchus and his revellers. 

The allusion is to the dissipation of the cava- 
liers of Charles II. 's court. 

Page 177, lines 31-38. Thracian bard, etc. 

Orpheus, grieving over the loss of his wife 
Eurydice, was torn to pieces hy the Maenads 
for refusing to sing. 

Page 178, line 91. Absolved. 

Completed. 

Page 179, lines 153, 151. To lose self -lost. 

To lose those who hy their own deeds are 
already lost. 

Page 179, line 162. Meanwhile inhabit lax. 

Until the space left vacant by the rebel angels 
is filled by man, enjoy the roominess of depopu- 
lated Heaven. 

Page 180, line 231. Thy just circumference, 
World. 

Christ circumscribes not the limits of the 
earth, but of the Mundus or Created Universe, 
of which the earth was the centre, and the 
outer circumference the Primum Mobile. See 
introduction on Cosmology of Paradise Lost. 

Page 180, lines 261-274. 

Milton attempts here, as throughout his ac- 
count of the creation, to reconcile so far as may 
be the Biblical narrative with the Ptolemaic 
astronomy. The "firmament" is the whole ex- 
panse of circum-terrestrial space stretching out- 
ward to the eight sphere, that of the Fixed 
Stars. The " waters underneath " are those on 
the earth's surface, "the waters above," or 
"crystalline ocean," is the crystalline sphere, 
the ninth in order from the earth, between the 
sphere of fixed stars and Primum Mobile. The 
Mundus or World is said, by a rather bold and 
difficult figure, to be built on the waters of the 
crystalline ocean, as the earth, more intelligibly, 
is said to be built on the terrestrial waters. 
Some confusion arises from the fact that the 
word "firmament" was applied by the Ptole- 
maists, not to the whole expanse of space, but 
to the sphere of the fixed stars, here regarded 
as merely the outer limit of the firmament. 

Page 180, line 299. Torrent rapture. 

Rapture keeps its literal signification of a 
snatching or hurrying along. The reader must 
be constantly on the lookout for such uses of 
common words. 

Page 181, line 366. The morning planet gilds 
her horns. 

Interesting as showing Milton's acquaintance 
with the discovery, then recent, that Venus 
has phases like the moon. When between oppo- 
sition and quadrature she is crescent-shaped. 

Page 182, line 421. Summed their pens. 

Grew their wings complete ; Latin penna, 
wing. 

Page 182, line 425. Region. 

Upper air. 

Page 183, line 457. Wons. 



Dwells. 

Page 183, line 467. Libbard. 

Leopard. 

Page 185, fines 618, 619. Founded in view on 
the clear hyalin. 

See note to lines 261-274, end. 

Page 185, line 620. Almost immense. 

Immense keeps its original strong sense, im- 
measurable. 

Page 185, line 640. 

In the first edition this book and the next 
formed one. 

Page 185. Book VIII. 

Page 185, line 15. When I behold, etc. 

The discussion which follows shows that Mil- 
ton, although accepting the Ptolemaic cosmol- 
ogy for formal purposes, was still in doubt as 
to its ultimate truth. He may have introduced 
the passage to guard himself, in case the theo- 
ries of Copernicus should be established. 

Page 186, line 23. Punctual. 

Tiny, as a mere point ; Lat. punctum. 

Page 186, fines 81-84. How contrive to save 
appearances, etc. 

Milton here refers to the complicated devices 
resorted to by the Ptolemaic astronomers, to 
"save appearance," as successive objections 
to, their theory arose in observed phenomena. 
To account for the varying rapidity of the sun's 
motion, they had assumed that the sun's 
sphere, instead of revolving around the earth 
as a centre (centric), was slightly displaced (ec- 
centric) so as to revolve about a point outside 
the earth. Again, to account for the retrograde 
motion of the planets they had postulated that 
instead of being fixed immovably in their 
spheres, and performing exactly regular revolu- 
tions about the earth (cycles), they were in some 
cases free to move about within those spheres 
in smaller cycles of revolution (epicycles). The 
phrase "gird the sphere " refers to the Primum 
Mobile, which served as a kind of girdle for the 
universe. 

Page 187, line 108. Numberless. 

I. e. immeasurable. 

Page 187, line 130. Three different motions. 

I. e. revolution on its axis, revolution around 
the sun, and the oscillation from the line of the 
axis, whichcauses the precession of the equinoxes 
(cf. note on phrase "the trepidation talked," 
Book III. line 483). In line 131 the word 
" else" must be interpreted as " either." Ra- 
phael says there that movements of the heavenly 
bodies must be explained either by the old 
method of referring them to a series of spheres 
moving obliquely upon each other (thwart obli- 
quities), or by the new method, in which the 
sun is saved the labor of journey about the 
earth, and even the "swift nocturnal and diur- 
nal rhomb" of the Primum mobile, invisible 
except by the eye of imagination, is dispensed 
with. 

Page 187, line 149. With their attendant moons. 

Galileo had lately discovered the satellites of 
Jupiter and Saturn. 

Page 187, line 158. Obvious to dispute. 

Open to, inviting, dispute. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



403 



Page 191, lines 410, 417. Not so is Man, but in 
degree, etc. 

The meaning seems to be, that Man is not per- 
fect, but stands in a scale, with creatures above 
and below him. 

Page 192, line 510. 

Milton's doctrine of the essential inferiority 
of woman to man here finds its most open ex- 
pression. 

Page 192, line 5o6. Occasionally. 

In response to an occasion. 

Page 193, lines 608-610. 

The meaning seems to be " I am not foiled 
(i. e. unbalanced, robbed of judgment) by the 
objects which my senses present to me under 
various forms." 

Page 194, line 645. Since to part. 

Condensed phrase for " Since it is necessary 
for you to depart." 

Page 194. Book IX. 

Page 194, lines 14-19. Argument not less but 
more heroic than the wrath, etc. 

Milton refers to the three great epics of an- 
tiquity : the wrath of Achilles, as sung in the 
Iliad ; Neptune's ire against Odysseus, as sung 
in the Odyssey ; Juno's ire against iEneas, son 
of Cytherea or Venus, and the rage of Turnus 
because, Lavinia was promised to ./Eneas, as 
^celebrated in the ^Eneid. 

Page 194, fines 27, 28. Not sedulous . . . to 
indite wars. 

Nevertheless, Milton had long pondered the 
wars of Arthur as an epic subject. 

Page 194, line 35. Impreses. 

Devices on a knight's shield or trappings. 

Page 194, fine 30. Bases. 

Kilts or lower garments worn by a mediaeval 
warrior. 

Page 195, lines 04-66. Thrice the equinoctial 
line he circled. 

The picture of Satan " riding with darkness," 
i. e. following the shadow of the earth through 
space, for seven nights, is one of the most sim- 
ply majestic in the poem. To circle the equi- 
noctial line he flew around the earth three times 
parallel with the equator. He then flew four 
times from pole to pole, along the great circles 
(colures) drawn from the poles through the sol- 
stices and the equinoxes. 

Page 195, lines 71, 72. 

The existence of this stream flowing beneath 
the garden of Paradise has already mentioned ; 
see note, Book IV. line 223. 

Page 195, lines 77-82. 

Satan had first flown north from Eden to the 
Pool Maotis ; i. e. the sea of Azof in Russia ; 
then northeast to Of, a river of Siberia. His 
westward journey had been from Orontes. a river 
of Asia Minor, across the Mediterranean and 
the Atlantic to the Isthmus of Darien, and on- 
ward across the Pacific to India. 

Page 196, line 170. Obnoxious to. 

Open to harm or indignity from. 

Page 197, line 245. Wilderness. 

Wildness. 

Page 197, line 249. 

An Alexandrine, unless we count the last two 



short syllables as extra-metrical. Cf. Book 
VIII. fine 21 6. 

Page 199, line 384. So bent. 

I. e. but if he be bent on tempting the weaker 
of us. 

Page 199, line 387. Delia. 

Diana. 

Page 199, lines 393-395. 

Pales, goddess of pastures ; Pomona, goddess 
of fruits ; Ceres, goddess of husbandry. 

Page L99, line 396. Virgin of Proserpina. 

Not yet having borne Proserpina to Jove. 

Page 199, line 438. Hand of Eve. 

I. e. the work of Eve's hand, in apposition 
with preceding nouns. 

Page 199, lines 439-443. Those gardens feigned. 

The gardens of Adonis, though not mentioned 
by classic writers (with the exception of a dubi- 
ous reference by Pliny), are spoken of by Spen- 
ser and Shakespeare. These, as well as the gar- 
dens of the Plueacian king Alcinous, the host of 
" Laertes's son " Odysseus, Milton speaks of as 
fabulous in contrast with the real garden of 
Solomon, where he entertained the daughter of 
Pharaoh. 

Page 200, line 450. Tedded grass. 

Mown and spread out to dry. The passage 
has a pathetic side, as a reminiscence of Milton's 
youth at Horton. 

Page 200, line 506. Hermione and Cadmus. 

Hermione, or Hermonia, and Cadmus, her 
husband, were at their own request changed 
into serpents, to escape the miseries of life. 
"■Changed" is used in the difficult sense of 
"took the place of." 

Page 200, line 507. The god in Epidaurus. 

The god in Epidaurus is iEsculapius, who 
came to Rome in the form of one of the ser- 
pents sacred to his worship. Ammonian Jove 
or Jupiter Amnion was seen transformed to a 
serpent in company with Olympias, of whom 
he was enamored. Capitoline Jove was also seen 
in serpent shape with the woman who bore him 
Scipio Africanus, here called the "height of 
Rome." 

Page 201, line 522. Than at Circean call the 
herd disguised. 

Circe is fabled to have changed men into 
beasts by her enchantments, and kept the fan- 
tastic herd at her beck and call. 

Page 201, line 549. Glozed. 

Flattered. 

Page 202, line 049. The credit of whose virtue 
rest with thee. 

Rest is hortative. The meaning is, let it rest 
with thee. I will not put it to proof. 

Page 202, line 668. Fluctuates. 

Literal, bends or waves to and fro. 

Page 2(i4. line sin. Safe. 

As regards any danger from him (Browne). 

Page 20.1, line 845. Divine of. 

Divining, being prescient of. 

Page 215, line 846. Faltering measure. 

I. e. the faltering beats of his heart in anxiety. 

Page 206, line 945. Not well conceived of God. 

I. e. it is not easy to conceive that God should 
lose his own labor. 



404 



APPENDIX 



Page 207, lines 1017-20. Of sapience no small 
part, since, etc. 

Adam's witticism is a trifle abstruse and pon- 
derous, depending on the double meaning of 
the Latin sapere, either to taste or to know. 
The word savour (taste), he says, we apply to 
intellectual things, and conversely apply to the 
discerning palate an intellectual epithet, judi- 
cious. 

Page 208, lines 1102-10. 

This description of the banyan tree is famous, 
especially line 1107, praised by Coleridge. 

Page 209. Book X. 

Page 210, line 38. Foretold so lately, etc. 

An absolute construction. What would come 
to pass having been so lately foretold. 

Page 210, line 49. Death denounced that day. 

In apposition with "sentence;" denounced 
= pronounced. 

Page 211, line 84. Conviction to the Serpent 
none belongs. 

The Serpent's guilt is too apparent to need 
proof, seems to be the meaning. 

Page 212, lines 169-174. More to know con- 
cerned not Man. 

It was not necessary for man to understand 
the "mysterious terms" of God's judgment on 
the Serpent, which referred to the' brute instru- 
ment only symbolically, really to Satan ; man 
knew not that Satan was his tempter, nor would 
such knowledge have altered his offence. 

Page 212, lines 183-190. When Jesus, son of 
Mary, etc. 

This passage is a curious conglomerate of 
allusions to Biblical texts: Luke x. 18; Eph. 
ii. 22 ; Col. iii. 15 ; Ps. lxviii. ; Rom. xvi. 20. 

Page 212, lines 217, 218. Skins of beasts, or 
slain, etc. 

Milton leaves us in doubt whether, to obtain 
the skins Avith which Adam and Eve were 
clothed, beasts were slain, or whether skins 
were used which had been shed by their 
wearers, as the snake sheds his, to be " repaid " 
with a youthful coat. 

Page 213, line 231. In counterview. 

Gazing at each other. 

Page 213, line 246. Sympathy or some connatu- 
ral force, etc. 

Because the fall of Man had " brought death 
into the world, and all our woe." 

Page 213, line 279. Feature. 

The derivation is from Latin facer e, to make ; 
Italian fattura, thing made. Here used in sense 
of shape or image. 

Page 213, line 281. Sagacious. 

From Lat. sagax, keen of scent. 

Page 213, lines 290-293. Cronian Sea, etc. 

The Cronian Sea is the Arctic Ocean ; Petsora 
(modern Petchora) is a gulf of the Arctic in 
"northeastern Russia;" " imagined way " re- 
fers to the seventeenth-century hypothesis of a 
northeast passage to China (Cathay). 

Page 213, lines 294-301. Death with his mace 
petrific . . . smote. 

Death forms the beginning of the bridge be- 
tween Hell and the Earth by striking into 
" Gorgonian rigor," i. e. stiffness like that 



which seized upon those who beheld the Gor- 
gon, the uncompounded matter of chaos. This 
he fastened at the mouth of Hellgate as firmly 
as Zeus fastened the floating isle of Delos to 
the bottom of the sea, that there Leto might 
bring forth Apollo and Artemis. By the same 
process of solidifying the crude floating sub- 
stances of chaos he carries the bridge out to- 
ward the great ball of the Mundus or created 
universe, where it hung from Heaven. 

Page 214, line 311. 

When a storm destroyed the bridge begun 
over the Hellespont, Xerxes ordered the waves 
to be scourged. 

Page 214, line 313. Pontifical. 

The present meaning of the word comes from 
the fact that in ancient Rome the building of 
bridges was a sacred function, in the hands of 
priests, who were called pontifices, or bridge- 
makers. 

Page 214, lines 320-329. And now their way to 
Earth they had descried. 

We must imagine Sin and Death landing and 
mooring their bridge somewhere on the outer 
and upper surface of the opaque ball of the Pri- 
mum Mobile, and proceeding thence to the 
opening into the interior of the universe at the 
foot of the heavenly stairway and directly un- 
derneath Heaven-gate. Here was the converg- 
ing point of " three several ways," one leading 
upward to Heaven, a second downward to the 
Earth, the third across Chaos to Hell. Enter- 
ing here they are about to fly inward through 
the successive spheres toward the earth ball, 
when they behold Satan steering upward toward 
them, keeping, perhaps, from fear of Uriel, as 
far as possible from the sun ; between the con- 
stellations of Centaur and Scorpio, he would be 
separated by nearly the whole expanse of the 
Heavens from Aries, in which constellation the 
sun then was. 

Page 214, line 348. Pontifice. 

Bridge structure. 

Page 214, line 381. His quadrature, from thy 
orbicular world. 

Satan implies that Heaven is square or cubi- 
form, in contrast with the spheric contour of 
the World. Milton probably had in mind the 
description of the New Jerusalem as ''four- 
square," as Hume suggests. 

Page 215, line 403. My substitutes. 

I. e. as my substitutes or deputies. 

Page 215, lines 431-436. As when the Tartar 
from his Russian foe, etc. 

In writing these lines Milton had in mind re- 
cent conflicts between the Russians and Tartars 
on the one hand, and Persians and Turks on the 
other. Bactrian Sophi = Shah of Persia, Bac- 
tria forming a part of the Persian dominion, 
and Sophi (Sooffee, Suffavee), being the name of 
the reigning dynasty. The "realm of Aladule " 
is Greater Armenia, so called from its last king ; 
this country the Persian would leave waste in 
retreating to his capital Tauris (Tebreez) or the 
fortified city of Casbeen (Kasveen). — Keight- 
ley and Masson. 

Page 215, line 457. Divan. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



405 



Oriental term for council. 

Page 21(3, line 475. Uncouth. 

Unknown. 

Page 216, lines 524-528. Amphisbcena dire, etc. 

The Amphisbtena is a snake which, as the 
name implies, was believed to go either tail-first 
or head-first, at will ; hydras = water-snake ; 
dipsas, a snake whose bite produced raging 
thirst. The drops of blood falling from the 
severed head of Gorgon upon the soil of Lybia 
engendered multitudes of serpents ; Ophiusa, 
meaning isle of snakes, of doubtful situation. 

Page 217, line 560. Megozra. 

One of the Furies. 

Page 217, line 572. Whom they triumphed once ' 
lapsed. 

Whom they triumphed over for a single trans- 
gression. 

Page 217, line 579. Purchase. 

Gain, profit. 

Page 217, lines 581-584. Ophion and Eury- 
nome. 

Ophion and Eurynome (the latter word means 
wide - encroaching), according to an obscure 
myth, held the sovereignty of Olympus until 
driven out by Saturn. Milton supposes that 
the myth refers to Satan and Eve, and was pro- 
pagated by the fallen angels, in their characters 
as heathen gods. Dictean Jove ; so called from 
the mountain of Dicte in Crete. 

Page 218, line 656. Blanc moon. 

Pale ; Italian bianca, white. 

Page 218, lines 659, 661. Sextile, square, and 
trine. 

Milton here uses the language of astrology, 
mentioning the five " aspects " or relations of the 
planets to each other which determined their 
good or evil influence. The first aspect, called 
here Synod (more commonly called "conjunc- 
tion"), was presented by two planets in a line 
and in proximity on the same side of the sun ; 
the second, third, and fourth aspects, sextile, 
square, and trine, by two planets separated re- 
spectively by one sixth, one fourth, and one 
third of the Zodiac ; the fifth aspect, "opposi- 
tion," was presented by two planets on opposite 
sides of the sun, and separated from each other 
by half the zodiacal signs. Of these aspects, 
those of square and opposition were commonly 
held malign, that of synod indifferent, and those 
of sextile and trine, benignant. Milton seems to 
consider them all capable of " noxious efficacy." 
It would be interesting to know how far he 
shared the popular belief of his day in astrology. 

Page 218, lines 669-678. 

Milton supposes that before the fall of Adam 
the plane of the ecliptic coincided with the plane 
of the eqiiator, but that after that event, God, 
in order to bring in change of season, either 
tipped the earth to its present angle of 23^ de- 
grees with the ecliptic, or caused the sphere, 
the fourth sphere, to revolve in such a way as 
to make the sun journey now north of the equa- 
torial plane, from Aries up through Taurus (of 
which the Pleiades, called Atlantic, because 
daughters of Atlas, formed a part), thence 
through Gemini (the Spartan twins Castor and 



Pollux), till he reached his farthest point north 
in Cancer (the Tropic Crab), then again south- 
ward till he reached his lowest point in Capri- 
corn, 23h degrees south of the equatorial plane. 

Page 219, lines 081-6*7. To them day, etc. 

The meaning is : If the axis of the earth had 
not been inclined, the days and nights would 
have been equal over the whole globe, except in 
the polar circle, where day would have been per- 
petual ; there the sun to make up for his greater 
distance (greater by half the diameter of the 
earth) would have rolled perpetually just above 
the horizon. Also Greenland (Estotiland) and 
the corresponding southern portion of earth be- 
low the Straits of Magellan would not be af- 
flicted with the severe winter which they now 
experience. 

Page 219, line 688. The sun, as from Thyestean 
banquet. 

The sun is represented as turning from the 
sight of man's sin as, according to fable, it 
turned from its course on beholding the flesh of 
Thyestes's sons served up to their father by 
Atreus. 

Page 219, lines 695-706. Norumbega. 

An old name for a portion of North America, 
corresponding roughly to New England ; Sa- 
moed shore, the northeast shore of Russia. The 
four north winds named, rushing south, encoun- 
ter the two south winds from the Sierra Leone 
mountains of Africa; at the "storm-centre" 
meet also the two west winds Zephyr and Tibec- 
chio, and the east winds, Eurus and Sirocco. 
The names are introduced for their sonorous 
effect. 

Page 219, line 720. Miserable of happy. 

From being happy. O such misery after such 
happiness! woidd come near expressing the idea. 

Page 221, line 834. So might the ivrath ! 

I.e. would that the wrath might light on me, 
as does the blame. 

Page 221, lines 898-908. 

This seems a kind of cynical rewording of the 
well-known passage in the Midsummer Night's 
Dream, beginning, 

The course of true love never did run smooth. 

Perhaps the words "his happiest choice too 
late shall meet " refer to his own meeting with 
Miss Davis, as Keightley suggests. In the lines 
below beginning with 909, Milton is believed to 
have had in mind his own reconciliation with 
Mary Powell. 

Page 224, line 1075. Tine. 

Kindle. 

Page 224. Book XT. 

Page 224, line 12. Deucalion and Pyrrha : 
the classical counterparts of Noah and his wife. 

Page 225, line 74. Heard in Oreb. 

When the Lord appeared to Moses in the 
burning bush on Mt. Horeb (Oreb) and com- 
manded him to deliver his brethren from bond- 
age. 

Page 226, line 135. Leucothea. 

The Greek goddess of morning. 

Page 226, line 159. Eve rightly called. 

Because Eve or Havah is from a Hebrew 



406 



APPENDIX 



verb meaning " to live ; " hence an appropriate 
name for the mother of mankind. 

Page 227, lines 185-189. 

The birds pursued by the eagle and the hart 
and hind chased by the lion foreshadow the 
driving of Adam and Eve from the garden by 
Michael. 

Page 227, lines 213, 214. When the Angels met. 

" And Jacob went on his way, and the angels 
of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, 
he said, This is God's host : and he called the 
name of that place Mahanaim." — Gen. xxxii. 

!» 2 - 

Page 227, lines 216-220. On the flaming mount 

. . . in Dothan. 

And the Lord opened the eyes of the young 
man ; and he saw : and, behold, the mountain 
was full of horses and chariots of fire round 
about Elisha." — 2 Kings vi. 17. The army 
sent by the king of Syria to apprehend Elisha 
was smitten with blindness. 

Page 228, lines 242, 243. Melibcean. 

From Melibcea, in Thessaly, where a fish was 
caught from which a famous purple dye was 
extracted. Sarra is the "Latinized form of 
Tsor, or Tyre ; " the famous Tyrian purple is 
meant. For the word grain, see note on Book 
V. line 285. 

Page 229, line 383. Our second Adam. 

Christ. 

Page 229, lines 385-411. 

This is the most extended of the many pas- 
sages in which Milton shows his delight in the 
sonority and dim but gorgeous suggestiveness 
of proper names. The less familiar of these 
are : Temir, better known as Tamurlaine, king 
of what is now Tartary ; Paquin, Pekin, seat 
of the Chinese (Sinaean) kings ; Agra and Lahor, 
in India ; the golden Chersonese, i. e. the penin- 
sula of Malacca ; Ercoco, the northernmost port 
of Abyssinia, whose ruler has still the title of 
Negus ; Mombaza, Quiloa, and Melind, on the 
east coast of Africa, seats of the less (i. e. 
lesser) maritime kings ; Sofala, farther south, 
once thought to be the Ophir mentioned in the 
Bible, whence Solomon obtained his gold ; Al- 
mansor, Susa (Tunis), and Tremisen, all in the 
Barbary States of North Africa. The Sultan 
is called " Turchestan-born " because the Turks, 
or Tartars, came from Turkestan. " Geryon's 
sons " are the Spaniards, so called from the mon- 
ster Geryon, a mythic king of Spain. 

Page 230, line 414. Purged with euj)hrasy 
and rue. 

Euphrasy, "eye-bright," and rue were both 
believed to have the power of strengthening 
and spiritualizing the vision. 

Page 230, line 433. Sard. 

An old form of sward. 

Page 231, line 487. Marasmus. 

Consumption. 

Page 232, line 573. Fusil. 

Cast in a mould. 

Page 232, line 574. On the hither side a differ- 
ent sort. 

The sons of Seth are nearer Paradise than 
the sons of Cain. 



Page 233, line 62G. Erelong to swim at large. 

I. e. in the Deluge. 

Page 233, line 0(55. Of middle age one rising. 

The patriarch Enoch, 305 years old. 

Page 234, lines 094, 095. And for glory done, etc. 

Masson interprets these difficult lines by sup- 
plying words from preceding clauses : " To be 
styled great conquerors shall be held the high- 
est pitch of triumph for glory achieved." 

Page 235, line 773. Which neither his fore- 
knowing. 

Neither, without the following nor, a difficult 
construction in English, Milton imitates from 
the Latin. 

Page 235, line 831. Horned flood. 

A translation of the classic " taurif ormis ; ' ' 
the sweeping of the water to either side as it 
meets an obstacle gave rise to the epithet. 

Page 230, line 800. Listed. 

Striped. 

Page 237. Book XII. 

Page 237, lines 1-5. 

These five lines were added in the second edi- 
tion, when the original tenth book was divided 
into two. 

Page 237, line 24. Till one shall rise. 

Nimrod, whose name Milton derives, line 36, 
from a Hebrew word meaning " to rebel." 

Page 237, line 42. The mouth of Hell. 

For a moment Milton loses sight of his cos- 
mology and falls back into the classic concep- 
tion of a subterranean Hell. 

Page 238, line 85. Dividual. 

Separate or separable. 

Page 238, line 101. The irreverent son. 

Ham. 

Page 238, line 113. One faithful man. 

Abraham, said to be "bred up in idol wor- 
ship " because Terah, his father, " served other 
gods." 

Page 239, line 153. A son, and of his son a 
grandchild. 

Isaac and Jacob. 

Page 239, line 100. A younger son. 

Joseph. 

Page 239, line 191. The river-dragon. 

" Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon 
that lieth in the midst of his rivers." Ezekiel 
xxix. 3. 

Page 241, line 310. Joshua, whom the Gentiles 
Jesus call. 

As Joshua means Savior in Hebrew, the 
Greek writers frequently translated it by the 
word Jesus. The roots of the two words are 
identical. 

Page 241, line 338. Heaped to the popular 
su?n. 

I. e. added to the sum of sins committed by 
the people. 

Page 241, lines 355-300. Their strife pollution 
brings. 

In the person of Antiochus Epiphanes, who, 
coming to Jerusalem to settle the dissension 
for the high-priesthood, polluted the temple by 
entering it. The " stranger," to whom the 
sceptre is lost, is Pompey. The ruler appointed 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



407 



by Pompey had as son Herod, whose kingship 
of Judea " barred the Messiah of his right." 

Page 242, line 401. Appaid. 

Appeased, satisfied. 

Page 242, line 452. 

It is not necessary to emphasize the second 
syllable of "■triumphing." The reversal of ac- 
cent in the third foot by which a trochee is 
substituted for an iambus, breaks and acceler- 
ates the movement of the line consonantly with 
the sense. 

Page 244, lines 539, 540. The day of respiration. 

Relief, as at the drawing of a deep breath 
after some constraint. 

Page 244, lines 588, 589. Top of speculation. 

In a double sense. 

Page 245, line 635. Adust. 

Parched, from Lat. adurere, to scorch. 

Page 245, line 640. Subjected. 

Of course literal, " lying beneath." 

Page 247. Paradise Regained. 

Page 252. Book I. 

Page 252, line 8. Thou spirit. 

The same " Heavenly Muse " invoked at the 
beginning of Paradise Lost. 

Page 252, line 14. Wing full summed. 

Full-plumaged ; cf. "summed their pens," 
Par. Lost, vii. 421. 

Page 252, line 18. The great Proclaimer. 

John the Baptist. 

Page 252, line 43. Sad. 

In the old sense, "sober, serious." 

Page 253, lines 60-64. If ... by the head 
broken, be not intended, etc. 

The meaning is : if the prophecy that the 
seed of Eve shall bruise the serpent's head, 
does not mean that our power over the earth 
and the air shall be entirely reft from us. 

Page 253, fine 87. Obtains. 

Holds. 

Page 253, lines 89-93. His first begot we 
know. 

Satan is ignorant of the identity of the Son of 
God in Heaven and the Messiah on earth. 

Page 254, line 137. Then told'st. 

A bold omission of the subject, unless " then " 
is a misprint. 

Page 254, lines 201-208. When I was yet a 
child, etc. 

These lines have been pointed out as de- 
scribing Milton's own boyhood and adolescence. 

Page 255, line 255. Just Simeon and prophetic 
Anna. 

See Luke ii. 25-39. 

Page 256, line 302. Such solitude before choicest 
society. 

A line of peculiar metre, a trochee being sub- 
stituted for an iambus in the fourth foot, and 
two extrametrical short syllables added at 
the end. Such departures from the monotony 
of regular structure, more frequent in Paradise 
Regained than in Paradise Lost, mark the 
transition to the elaborate rhythmic system of 
Samson Agonistes. 

Page 256, line 333. 

The word "aught" is according to present 



usage redundant ; aught what happens = what- 
ever happens. 

Page 256, line 350. Who fed our fathers here 
with manna. 

Not literally in the desert where Christ now 
is ; " here " is to be taken generically. 

Page 257, lines 368-370. 

Job i. 6. 

Page 257, lines 371-375. 

And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab, 
that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead ? 
. . . And there came forth a spirit . . . and 
he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying 
spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he 
said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also. 
1 Kings xxii. 21, 22. 

Page 257, line 428. A liar in four hundred 
mouths. 

I. e. the four hundred false prophets who 
counselled Ahab to give battle at Ramoth- 
gilead. 

Page 259. Book II. 

Page 259, line 16. The great Thisbite ; 

Elijah, native of the town of Thisbe in Gilead. 

Page 259, lines 87-91. Trouble, as old Simeon 
foretold. 

An incident of the Presentation in the Tem- 
ple. Luke ii. 34, 35. 

Page 260, line 125. So may we hold. 

" So " merely enforces the exclamatory wish ; 
not to be taken adverbially. 

Page 26p, line 131. Tasted him. 

Tried him ; cf. French "tater," to touch. 

Page 261, lines 178-191. 

" The sons of God saw the daughters of men 
that they were fair ; and they took them wives 
of all which they chose." Gen. vi. 2. Milton 
calls them "false titled" on the ground that 
they were the followers of Satan, roaming the 
earth as heathen deities. The names which 
follow mark some amours famous in the classi- 
cal mythologies. 

Page 261, line 196. Pellean conqueror. 

Alexander the Great, born at Pella in Mace- 
donia. 

Page 261, line 199. He surnamed of Africa. 

Scipio Africanus, who restored a Spanish girl, 
who had fallen into his hands, to her family. 

Page 261, line 217. Seated as on the top of 
Virtue?* Hill. 

"Seated " refers grammatically to the noun 
(or pronoun) latent in the possessive "his "in 
the preceding line. 

Page 2(52, lines 266-271!. 

See the seventeenth and nineteenth chapters of 
Kings. 

Page 262, lines 306-311. Others of some note, 
etc. 

The desert where Hagar wandered with Ish- 
mael (Nebaioth, Ishmael's son, is named ap- 
parently by oversight), and to which Elijah the 
Thisbite (Thebez for Thisbe) retired, is here 
confused with the great desert farther south. 
Exactness of geography is unimportant for the 
poet's purpose. 

Page 263, line 344. Grisamber-steamed. 



408 



APPENDIX 



Ambergris was formerly used as a flavoring 
in sumptuous cookery. 

Page 263, line 347. Lucrine bay. 

Lake Lucrinas, near Baise in Italy, famous 
for its shell-fish. 

Page 263, line 353. Bylas. 

A youthful follower of Herakles. 

Page 263, line 356. Amalthea's horn. 

Endowed by Jupiter, whom Amalthea had 
nursed in infancy, with the power to pour out 
fruits and flowers in inexhaustible abundance. 

Page 263, lines 360, 361. Knights of the Round 
Table. 

Familiar to Milton from the Morte d' Arthur 
of Sir Thomas Malory. Logres, a vague name 
for Britain ; Lyones, Cornwall. 

Page 264, line 423. Antipater the Edomite. 

Father of Herod, appointed governor of the 
Jews by Pompey. 

Page 264, line 458. Yet not for that a crown, 
etc. 

"For that " = because. The meaning is: I 
do not reject your offer because of the cares of 
kingship, since they constitute the duty and the 
glory of such an office ; but he who rules him- 
self is more a king than he who rules others. 

Page 265. Book III. 

Page 265, line 14. Urim and Thummim. 

Gems worn in the breast-plate of the High 
Priest, and consulted on important occasions as 
oracles, somewhat as the beryl-stone of mediae- 
val superstition. 

Page 267, lines 165-170. So did not Macha- 
beus, etc. 

Judas Maceabseus, who with his father and 
brothers led the revolt of the Jews against the 
king of Syria, and made himself ruler of Ju- 

Page 267, line 213. Whatever, for itself con- 
demned. 

I. e. Whatever my crime may have been, it 
was condemned, etc. 

Page 268, line 234. And once a year Jerusa- 
lem. 

"Now his parents went to Jerusalem every 
year at the feast of the passover." 

Page 268, lines 270-309.^ _ 

To arouse Christ's ambition Satan points out 
to him the cities and lands held by successive 
dynasties, Assyrian, Persian, and Macedonian, 
and now included in the great Parthian empire, 
founded by Arsaces. The power of this em- 
pire, made more tangible by tbe spectacle of 
the army issuing to battle, he offers to put in 
Christ's hand ; or, as an alternative, the power 
of the Roman Empire, sovereign in the West 
as the Parthian in the East. The reader should 
not allow the erudition of the passage to inter- 
fere with his enjoyment of the gorgeousness and 
pomp of the marshalled names. Salmanassar, 
who carried the Ten Tribes to captivity in As- 
syria. Him who twice led captive, etc., Nebu- 
chadnezzar. 

Page 269, lines 316-321. 
< The places named range from the northern 
limit of the empire, Iberia, between the Euxine 



and the Caspian, to the southern coast town of 
Balsara, on the Persian Gulf. 

Page 269, line 329. Indorsed. 

From Latin dorsus, back. 

Page 269, line 330. Pioners. 

Pioneers, soldiers who preceded the army, to 
prepare the way ; hence the modern application 
of the term. 

Page 269, lines 336-344. 

The reference is to a famous Italian romance, 
the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo, which Ari- 
osto carried on in his Orlando Furioso. Agri- 
cane, king of Tartary, in order to win Angelica, 
besieged her father Gallaphrone, king of Ca- 
thay, with an army of more than two million 
men. 

Page 269, lines 366, 367. 

Hyranus II., of the dynasty of the Maccabees, 
was deposed and taken captive by the Parthians, 
while Palestine was under Roman protection. 
Antigonus, his nephew, was not taken captive, 
as Milton supposes, but succeeded to his uncle's 
throne with the aid of the Parthians. 

Page 270, lines 409-12. 

Satan having " provoked David " to take the 
census of Israel, the Lord gave David his choice 
of punishment, three years' famine, three 
months of defeat in battle, or three days' pesti- 
lence. 1 Chron. 1-14. 

Page 270. Book IV. 

Page 271, line 40. Parallax. 

Not used in the strict astronomical sense, but 
as a synonym for refraction. Rome, being be- 
low the horizon, could be seen only by some 
deflection of the light rays from a straight line. 

Page 271, line 66. Turms. 

Lat. turma, a body of about thirty horse. 

Page 271, lines 70-79. 

The survey is first southward, to Eyene, in 
southern Egypt, marking the limit of Roman 
rule ; and to Meroe, still further south, below 
the tropic of Cancer ; thence westward to the 
states of northern Africa ruled over by Boc- 
chus, father of Jugurtha, to Mauritania and the 
Moorish Sea, southeast across Asia to Malacca 
(Golden Chersoness) and Ceylon (Taprobane) ; 
then westward to Spain (Gades = Cadiz), and 
thence in a wide circle north and east to the Sea 
of Azof in Russia (Tauric pool). 

Page 272, line 115. Atlantic stone. 

Numidian marble, according to Keightley. 

Page 272, line 119. Myrrhine. 

Porcelain. 

Page 272, line 142. Scene. 

Theatrical presentation ; Latin scena, stage. 

Page 274, lines 251-253. The schools of ancient 
sages, etc. 

The Lyceum was a gymnasium at Athens 
where Aristotle taught his followers the Peri- 
patetics ; the Stoa was a public portico, adorned 
with pictures of the battle at Marathon ; it was 
frequented by Zeno, founder of the Stoic school 
of philosophers. 

Page 274, line 270. Shook the arsenal. 

A phrase still unexplained by commentators. 

Page 276, line 411. Abortive. 



SUPPLEMENTARY LATIN AND GREEK POEMS 



409 



To be taken in an active sense, i. e. tending 
to destroy or render abortive the growths of 
nature. 

Page 276, line 427. Amice. 

Properly a linen cloth worn by a priest during 
mass, but here used in the general sense of 
" robe " or " habit." 

Page 276, line 457. The main. 

The entire universe, or macrocosm, contrasted 
with man, the microcosm (less universe). 

Page 270, line 403. And seem to point. 

We must understand either, "at whose head 
they seem to point," or " and seem to be point- 
ing out or prophesying something." 

Page 278. lines 563-508. 

The reference is to one of the twelve heroic 
"labors " of Hercules. 

Page 278, line 572. Theban monster. 

The Sphinx, whose riddle was solved by CEdi- 
pus. 

Page 278, line 605. Debel. 

Beat down in war. 

Page 279, line 624. Abaddon. 

The "fiend of the bottomless pit," here put 
for Hell itself. 

Page 279, lines 626-632. He all unarmed, shall 
chase thee. 

Milton applies to the final " binding of Satan," 
or expulsion of the satanic influences from the 
world, the phraseology of the miracle by which 
Christ afterward cured the man " tormented by 
a devil." 

Page 281. Samson Agonistes. 

Page 294, lines 28, 29. And from some great 
act, etc. 

This clause is best construed with "as- 
cended," and as correlative with " from off the 
altar." 

Page 294, line 38. Lower than bondslave. 

A contracted expression, due perhaps to the 
fact that the intervention of the concrete word 
"beast" has obscured the speaker's recollec- 
tion of the abstract word " strength." 

Page 295, line 144. Foreskins. 

Uncircumcised Philistines. 

Page 295, line 147. Azza. 

An alternative form of Gaza. 

Page 295, line 148. Hebron, seat of giants. 

I. e. of the descendants of Anak. 

Page 295, line 150. Whom the Gentiles feign. 

I. e. Atlas, the mythical supporter of the 
world. 

Page 296, line 181. Eshtaol and Zora. 

Places on the sea-coast between Joppa and 
Gaza. The "camp of Dan," where Samson 
grew up, was " between Zorah and Eshtaol." 

Page 297, lines 278-289. 

Judges viii. 4-9 ; xii. 1-6. 

Page 297, lines 321-325. Unclean, unchaste, 
etc. 

Dalila, being a heathen woman, is unclean, 
under the Mosaic law, and is to be held so in 
spite of reason, which sees no moral force in the 
judgment ; her unchastity, which was subse- 
quent to her marriage, Samson could not fore- 
see, hence that forms no part of his venal stain 
in marrying her. 



Page 298, fine .349. What not in man deceiva- 
ble. 

What is there in man which is not deceivable. 

Page 300, lines 499-501. 

The allusion is probably to Tantalus, punished 
for revealing the secrets of Zeus. 

Page 301, line 624. Apprehensive tender est 
parts. 

The apprehending mind, with its delicate or- 
ganization . 

Page 302, lines 715-718. 

Ships of Tarshish, in Cilicia, bound for the 
isles of Greece and for Cadiz, laden with the 
spices and silks of the East. 

Page 306, lines 988-990. 

For the story of Jael and Sisera, see Judges, 
chapters iv. and v. 

Page 300, line 1020. Paranymph. 

The bridegroom's companion on the wedding 
day. 

Page 307, line 1080. Og, or Anak and the 
Emims old. 

Giants of the early Hebrew mythology : Og, 
king of Bashan ; Anak, father of the giant race 
of the Anakim ; the Emims, "a people great 
and many and tall," defeated by Chedorlaomer 
in battle at Kiriathaim. 

Page 308, lines 1120-21. 

Brigandine, shirt of mail ; habergeon, neck 
and shoulder piece ; vant brass (vant brace), 
arm-piece ; greves, leg-pieces. Of Goliath it is 
said, " The staff of his spear was like a weaver's 
beam, and his spear's head weighed six hundred 
shekels of iron." 

Page 309, line 1242. Astaroth. 

The Phoenician goddess of the moon. 

Page 315, line 1619. Cataphracts. 

Greek *caTa<J>pd*cToi, protected, a term applied 
to cavalry when both horse and rider were 
heavily armed. 

Page 316, line 1713. Caphtor. 

The island of Crete, from which the Philis- 
tines were supposed to have come. 



II. SUPPLEMENTARY LATIN AND 
GREEK POEMS 

From the Elegiarum Liber 

apologus de rustico et hero 

Rusticus ex malo sapidissima poma quotannis 

Legit, et urbano lecta dedit Domino : 
Hie, incredibili fructus dulcedine captus, 

Malum ipsam in proprias transtulit areolas. 
Hactenus ilia ferax, sed longo debilis aevo, 

Mota solo assueto, protinus aret iners. 
Quod tandem ut patuit Domino, spe lusus inani, 

Damnavit celeres in sua damna raanus : 
Atque ait, "Heu quanto satius fuit ilia Co- 
loni 

(Parva licet) grato dona tulisse animo ; 
Possem ego avaritiam framare, gulamque vora- 
cem: 

Nunc periere mihi et foetus et ipse parens." 



4io 



APPENDIX 



[de moro] 

Galli ex concubitu gravidam te, Pontia, Mori 
Quis bene moratam morigeramque neget ? 



AD CHRISTINAM, SUECORUM REGINAM, 
NOMINE CROMWELLI 

Belupotens Virgo, Septem regina Trionum, 

Christina, Arctoi lucida stella poli! 
Cernis quas merui dura sub casside rugas, 

Utque senex armis impiger ora tero, 
Invia fatorum dum per vestigia nitor, 

Exequor et populi fortia jussa manu, 
Ast tibi submittit frontem reverentior umbra ; 

Nee sunt hi vultus Regibus usque truces. 



From the Sylvarum Liber 
in salmasii hundredam 

Quis expedivit Salmasio suam Hundredam, 
Picaraque docuit verba nostra conari ? 
Magister artis venter, et Jacobsei 
Centum, exulantis viscera marsupii regis. 
Quod, si dolosi spes refulserit nummi, 
Ipse, Antichristi qui rnodo primatum Papse 
Minatus uno est dissipare sufflatu, 
Cantabit ultro Cardinalitium melos. 



IN SALMASIUM 

Gaudete, scombri, et quicquid est piscium 

salo, 
Qui frigida hieme incolitis algentes freta ! 
Vestrum misertus ille Salmasius Eques 
Bonus amicire nuditatem eogitat ; 
Chartaeque largus apparat papyrinos 
Vobis cucullos, praeferentes Claudii 
Insignia, nomenque et decus, Salmasii ; 
Gestetis ut per omne cetarium forum 
Equitis clientes, scriniis mungentium 
Cubito virorum, et capsulis, gratissimos. 



PSALM CXIV 

'Ia-pa^\ ore Treaties, or' dykad <pvk.' 'icacwfiov 
AlyvnT iov kiire Stj/jlov, a7rex0eci, fiapPapotycavov, 
A)) r6re fxovvov %t)v oaiov yeuos vies 'loOSa- 
'Ei/ 8e Qebs kaolat fxeya Kpeicup fiaaiXeveu. 
EfSe ical evrpoirdhnv (pvyad 1 ippuiqae Odkacraa, 
Kvfj.ari eiXv/xepi] poOlcp, 6 8' dp 4(TTV<pe\lx&r] 
€ lpbs loptidvns ttot\ apyvpoeiSea Tniyfjv 
'E/c 5' opea aKapd/xoTaiv dweipecria KXoveovTo, 
: £ls npi'tl acppiyowvres evTpacpepc£ eu aXwp 
Baiorepai 8' a/xa naval avaaKiprT]aav epiirvai, 
Ola Trapal avpiyyi <f>iXy virb /j.r]Tepi dpves. 
Ilirre avy\ aha ddkaaaa, irekccp (pvyad* ippwrj- 

cras 
Kuyuan elkvjxevt) podicp ; ri 8' ap eaTvcpeklxOys 
c lpbs 'lopddvr}, ttotl apyvpoeiSea Tnjyfjv ; 
Tittt,' opea, aKupdfxo?(rij/ cureipecria nkoveeaQe, 
Tls Kpiol (TcppiyocavTes evrpacpep'SJ ev dkurj ; 
Bai6repai ri 8' ap' v jj.fj.es apa(TKiprr,(Tar'' epiirvai, 
Ola Trapal avpiyyi (j>ikri virb firjrepi dpves ; 
2eteo ya?a rpeovaa Qebv fxeydk' eKrvrreovra, 
Tata, ®ebu rpeiova' virarov aefias 'IccaKi'Sao, 
"Os re Kal e/c amkdhau Trorafj.ovs %€€ fxopfxvpov- 

ras, 
Kpi}ur]v r aevaov irerprjs awb b~aKpvoeo~o-r)S. 



PHILOSOPHUS AD REGEM QUENDUM, QUI EUM 
IGNOTUM ET INSONTEM INTER REOS FORTE 
CAPTUM INSCIUS DAMNAVERAT rr\V eirl Oavdrqf 
TTopevd/xeuos, nmc subito MISIT 

'& dva, ei oXecrrjs /xe rbv evvo/xov, ovSe r\.v dvtip&v 
Aeivbv 6'Aojs dpdcravra, aoepcorarou iaOi Kap-qvov 
'P77i8icov acpekoio, rb 8' varepov avBt vorjaeis, 
Ma\pi81cas 8' dp' eireira rebv irpbs Bvfxbv odvpy, 
Toiov 8' e/c Tvokws TrepMvvfxov dkKap okea-aas. 



IN EFFIGIEI EJUS SCULPTOREM 

'Afxade? yeypdtpOai x ei P^ rr t vSe /xeu eln6va 
4>ai7js rax dv, Trpbs elSos abrocjjves fSXencov. 
Tbu 8' eKrvTrcarbu oi/k etnyvovres, (pikoi, 
Tekare <f>avkov Svafxi/jLTjua faypdepov. 



INDEX 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



A book was writ of late called Tetrachordon, 74. 
A little onward lend thy guiding hand, 293. 
A young, and meek, and simple lover, 65. 
Adhuc madentes rore squalebant genae, 354. 
Altera Torquatum cepit Leonora poetam, 345. 

'AfxaBei. yeypaQOat x el P L T V v ^ e n * v elicova, 410. 

Among the holy mountains high, 84. 

Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite, gentes), 

344. 
Answer me when I call, 86. 
As on a rough hillside, at dusk of evening, 64. 
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered Saints whose 

bones, 77. 

Be not thou silent now at length, 81. 

Because you have thrown off your Prelate 

Lord, 75. 
Before the starry threshold of Jove's court, 40. 
Bellipotens Virgo, Septem regina Trionum, 

410. 
Blest is the man who hath not walked astray, 85. 
Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy, 30. 

Captain, or colonel, or knight in arms, 74. 
Cede, Meles ; cedat depressa Mincius urna, 321. 
Credula quid liquidam Sirena, Neapoli, jactas, 

345. 
Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a 

cloud, 76. 
Cum simul in regem nuper satrapasque Britan- 

nos, 343. 
Curre per immensum subito, mea littera, pon- 

tum, 329. 
Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though 

clear, 78. 
Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench, 78. 

Daughter to that good Earl, once President, 74. 
Dicite, sacrorum prsesides nemorum dese, 358. 
Diodati (e te '1 dir6 con maraviglia), 64. 
Diodati (I tell it thee with wonder), 65. 
Donna leggiadra, il cui bel nome onora, 63. 

Erewhile of music, and ethereal mirth, 15. 
Ergimi all' Etra o Clio, 321. 

Fairfax, whose name in arms through Europe 

rings, 76. 
Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race, 30. 

Galli ex concubitu gravidam te, Pontia, Mori, 

410. 
Gaudete, scombri, et quicquid est piscium salo, 

410. 
Gemelli cultu simplici gaudens liber, 375. 



Giovane, piano, e semplicetto amante, 65. 
God in the great assembly stands, 81. 
Graecia Maeonidem, jaetet sibi Roma Maronem, 
321. 

Haec quoque, Manse, tuae meditantur carmina 

laudi, 364. 
Hail, Native Language, that by sinews weak, 

14. 
Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song, 

75. 
Hence, loathed Melancholy, 26. 
Hence, vain deluding Joys, 28. 
Here lies old Hobson. Death hath broke his 

girt, 17. 
Here lieth one who did most truly prove, 17. 
Heu ! quam perpetuis erroribus acta f atiscit, 355. 
Himerides Nymph* (nam vos et Daphnin et 

Hylan, 368. 
How lovely are thy dwellings fair ! 82. 
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, 

19. 

I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs, 75. 
I, who erewhile the happy Garden sung, 252. 
Iapetionidem laudavit caeca vetustas, 344. 
In se perpetuo Tempus revolubile gyro, 333. 
In sooth, your beauteous eyes, my Lady, 65. 

IcrparjA ore nalSes or ayAaa <£vA' 'Ia»cw/3ov, 410. 

Jam pius extrema veniens Iacobus ab arcto, 

347. 
Jehovah, to my words give ear, 8(5. 
Juveni patria, virtutibus, eximio, 322. 

Lady gay and gracious, whose fair name hon- 
ors, 63. 
Lady ! that in the prime of earliest youth, 74. 
Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, 77. 
Let us with a gladsome mind, 11. 
Look, Nymphs and Shepherds, look ! 38. 
Lord God, that dost me save and keep, 84. 
Lord, how many are my foes ! 85. 
Lord, in thy anger do not reprehend me, 87. 
Lord, my God, to thee I fly, 87. 

Me thought I saw my late espoused saint, 78. 
Mitto tibi sanam non pleno ventre salutem, 337. 
Mcestus erara, et tacitus, nullo comitante sede- 
bam, 327. 

Nondum blanda tuas leges, Amathusia noram, 

340. 
Now the bright morning-star, Day's harbinger, 

30. 



4i3 



414 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



Nunc mea Pierios eupiam per peetora fontes, 
359. 

*il ava, el oAecrrjs fie toi> evvofnov, oi/Se rev' avSpiov, 410. 

O Fairest Flower, no sooner blown but blasted, 

12. 
O Jebovah our Lord, how wondrous great, 88. 
O Musa gressum quae volens trahis elaudum, 

362. 
O Nightingale that on yon bloomy spray, 30. 
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit, 102. 

Parere Fati discite legibus, 346. 

Per certo i bei vostr' oechi, Donna mia, 65. 

Purgatorem anirnse derisit Iacobus ignem, 344. 

Qual in colle aspro, all' imbrunir di sera, 64. 
Quern modo Roma suis devoverat impia diris, 

344. 
Quis expedivit Salmasio suam Hundredam, 410. 
Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa, 79. 

Ridonsi donne e giovani amorosi, 64. 
Rusticus ex malo sapidissima poma quotannis, 
409. 

Siccine tentasti ca3lo donasse Iaeobum, 344. 

Tandem, chare, tuse mihi pervenere tabellae, 
323. 



Te, qui conspicuus baculo fulgente solebas, 326. 
The ladies and young lovers laugh at me, 64. 
This is the month, and this the happy morn, 7. 
This rich marble doth inter, 18. 
Thy gracious ear, O Lord, incline, 83. 
Thy land to favour graciously, 82. 
Thou Shepherd that dost Israel keep, 79. 
To God our strength sing loud and clear, 80. 

Ut mens, forma, decor, f acies, mos, si pietas sic, 
321. 

Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old, 77. 

What needs my Shakespeare, for his honoured 

bones, 16. 
What slender youth, bedewed with liquid 

odours, 79. 
When Faith and Love, which parted from thee 

never, 76. 
When I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold, 101. 
When I consider how my light is spent, 77. 
When the blest seed of Terah's faithful Son, 10. 
Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the nations, 

85. 

Ye flaming Powers, and winged Warriors bright, 

31. 
Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more, 

60. 



INDEX OF TITLES 



{The titles of major tvorks and of general divisions are set in small capitals.) 



Ad Carolum Diodatum, 323. 

Ad Carolum Diodatum, ruri commorantem, 337. 

Ad Christinam, Suecorum Reginam, Nomine 

Cromwelli, 410. 
Ad Joannem Miltonem Anglum, triplici Poe- 

seos Laurea coronandum, Graeca nimirum, 

Latina. atque Hetrusca, Epigramma Joannis 

Salsilli Romani, 321. 
Ad Joannem Miltonum, 321. 
Ad Joannem Rousium, 375. 
Ad Leonoram Romae Canentem, 344. 
Ad Patrem, 358. 
Ad Pyrrham. Ode V, 79. 
Ad Salsillum, Poetam Romanum ^Egrotantem, 

362. 
Ad Thomam Junium, Praeceptorem suum, apud 

Mereatores Anglicos Hamburgae agentes Pas- 

toris munere fungentem, 329. 
Adventum Veris, In, 333. 
Al signor Gio. Miltoni, nobile inglese, 321. 
Andrewes, Dr., Bishop of Winchester, On the 

death of, 327. 
Apologus de Rustico et Hero, 410. 
Arcades, 38. 
At a Solemn Music, 30. 
At a Vacation Exercise in the College, 13. 

Blindness, On his, 77. 

Canzone (" Ridonsi donne e giovani amorosi " — 
" The ladies and young lovers laugh at me "), 
64. 

Christinam, Suecorum Reginam, Nomine Crom- 
welli, Ad, 410. 

Christ's Nativity, On the Morning of, 7. 

Circumcision, Upon the, 31. 

Coming of Spring, On the, 333. 

Comus, 40. 

Cromwell, Lord General, on the Proposals of 
Certain Ministers at the Committee for the 
Propagation of the Gospel, To the, 76. 

Damonis, Epitaphium, 367. 

De Auctoke Testimonia, 321. 

De Idea Platonica quemadmodum Aristoteles 

intellexit, 357. 
De Moro, 410. 
Death of a Fair Infant dying of a Cough, On 

the, 12. 
Death of Dr. Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, 

On the, 327. 
Death of the Bishop of Ely, On the, 354. 
Death of the University Beadle, On the, 326. 
Death of the Viee-Chancellor, a Physician, On 

the, 346. 



Diodatum, Carolum, Ad, 323. 

Diodatum, Carolum, ruri commorantem, Ad, 

337. 

Elegiakum Liber — Elegies and Epi- 
grams, 323. 

Elegia Prima : Ad Carolum Diodatum, 323. 

Elegia Secunda : In Obitum Praeconis Acade- 
mici Cantabrigiensis, 326. 

Elegia Tertia : In Obitum Praesulis Wintoni- 
ensis, 327. 

Elegia Quarta : Ad Thomam Junium, Praeeep- 
torem suum, apud Mereatores Anglicos Ham- 
burgae agentes Pastoris munere f ugentem, 329. 

Elegia Quinta : In Adventum Veris, 333. 

Elegia Sexta: Ad Carolum Diodatum, ruri 
commorantem, 337. 

Elegia Septima (Nondum blanda tuas leges, 
Amathusia noram), 340. 

Eliensis, Praesulis, In Obitum, 354. 

Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, An, 
18. 

Epitaphium Damonis, 367. 

Fairfax, Lord General, at the siege of Colches- 
ter, On the, 76. 

Father, To My, 358. 

Fifth Ode of Horace, The, 79. 

Fifth of November, Anniversary of the Gun- 
powder Plot, On the, 347. 

Horace, The Fifth Ode of, 79. 

Idea Platonica quemadmodum Aristoteles in- 
tellexit, De, 357. 

II Penseroso, 28. 

In Adventum Veris, 333. 

In Effigiei ejus Sculptorem, 410. 

In Inventorem Bombardae, 344. 

In Obitum Praeconis Academici Cantabrigien- 
sis, 326. 

In Obitum Praesulis Eliensis, 354. 

In Obitum Praesulis Wintoniensis, 327. 

In Obitum Procancellarii Medici, 346. 

In Proditionem Bombardicam, 343. 

In Quintum Novembris, 347. 

In Salmasii Hundredam, 410- 

In Salmasium, 410. 

Junium, Thomam, Praeceptorem suum, apud 
Mereatores Anglicos Hamburgae agentes Pas- 
toris munere f ugentem, Ad, 329. 

Joannes Baptista Mansus, Marchio Villensis 
Neapolitanus, ad Joannem Miltonium An- 
glum, 321. 



416 



INDEX OF TITLES 



L'Allegro, 26. 

Lawes, Mr. H., on his Airs, To, 75. 

Lawrence, To Mr., 77. 

Leonoram Romae Canentem, Ad, 344. 

Ley, Lady Margaret, To the, 74. 

Lycidas, GO. 

Mansus, 363. 

Massacre in Piemont, On the Late, 77. 

May Morning, Song on, 30. 

Miltonem, Joannem, Anglum, triplici Poeseos 

Laurea coronandum, Grseea nimirum, Latina, 

atque Hetrusca, Epigramnia Joannis Salsilli 

Romani, Ad, 321. 
Miltoni, Gio., nobile inglese, Al signor, 321. 
Miltoni, Joanni, Londinensi, 322. 
Miltonium, Joannem, anglum, Joannes Baptiste 

Mansus, Marchio Villensis Neapolitanus, Ad, 

321. 
Miltonum, Joannem, Ad, 321. 
Morning of Christ's Nativity, On the, 7. 

Naturam non pati senium, 355. 
New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Par- 
liament, On the, 75. 
Nightingale, Sonnet to the, 30. 

Obitum Prseconis Academici Cantabrigiensis, 
In, 326. 

Obitum Praesulis Eliensis, In, 354. 

Obitum Praesulis Wintoniensis, In, 327. 

Obitum Procancellarii Medici, In, 346. 

On his being arrived to the Age of Twenty- 
Three, 19. 

On his Blindness, 77. 

On his Deceased Wife, 78. 

On Paradise Lost, 101. 

On Shakespeare, 16. 

On the Coming of Spring, 333. 

On the Death of a Fair Infant dying of a 
Cough, 12. 

On the Death of Damon, 367. 

On the Death of Dr. Andrewes, Bishop of Win- 
chester, 327. 

On the Death of the Bishop of Ely, 354. 

On the Death of the University Beadle, 326. 

On the Death of the Vice-Chancellor, a Physi- 
cian, 346. 

On the Detraction which followed upon my 
writing Certain Treatises, 74. 

On the Same, 75. 

On the Fifth of November, Anniversary of the 
Gunpowder Plot, 347. 

On the Late Massacre in Piemont, 77. 

On the Lord General Fairfax at the Siege of 
Colchester, 76. 

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, 7. 

On the New Forcers of Conscience under the 
Long Parliament, 75. 

On the Platonic Idea as it was understood by 
Aristotle, 357. 

On the Religious Memory of Mrs. Catherine 
Thomson, my Christian Friend, Deceased 
Dec. 16, 1646, 76. 

On the University Carrier, 17. 

On the Same, Another, 17. 

On Time, 30. 



Paradise Lost, 89. 

Paradise Lost, On, 101. 

Paradise Regained, 247. 

Paraphrase of Psalm CXIV, A, 10. 

Passion, The, 15. 

Patrem, Ad, 358. 

Philosophus ad Regem quendum, qui eum igno- 
tum et insontem inter Reos forte cap turn in- 
scius damnaverat rrjv en-l Oavaria nopevo/xevos, haec 
subito misit, 410. 

Platonic Idea as it was understood by Aristo- 
tle, On the, 357. 

Poems written at Horton (1632-1638) and 
in Italy (1638-1639), 21. 

Poems written at School and at Col- 
lege (1624-1632), 3. 

Poems written during the Civil War 
and Protectorate (1642-1658), 67. 

Proditionem Bombardicam, In, 343. 

Psalm I (Blest is the man who hath not walked 
astray), 85. 

Psalm II (Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the 
nations), 85. 

Psalm III (Lord, how many are my foes!), 
85. 

Psalm IV (Answer me when I call), 86. 

Psalm V (Jehovah, to my words give ear), 86. 

Psalm VI (Lord, in thy anger do not reprehend 
me), 87. 

Psalm VII (Lord, my God, to thee I fly), 87. 

Psalm VIII (O Jehovah our Lord, how won- 
drous great), 88. 

Psalm LXXX (Thou Shepherd that dost Israel 
keep), 79. 

Psalm LXXXI (To God our strength sing loud 
and clear), 80. 

Psalm LXXXII (God in the great assembly 
stands), 81. 

Psalm LXXXIII (Be not thou silent now at 
length), 81. 

Psalm LXXXIV (How lovely are thy dwell- 
ings fair !), 82. 

Psalm LXXXV (Thy land to favour gra- 
ciously), 82. 

Psalm LXXXVI (Thy gracious ear, O Lord, 
incline), 83. 

Psalm LXXXVII (Among the holy mountains 
high), 84 ; 

Psalm LXXXVIII (Lord God, that dost me 
save and keep), 84. 

Psalm CXIV, A Paraphrase of, 10, 410. 

Psalm CXXXVI (Let us with a gladsome 
mind), 11. 

Pyrrhum, Ad. Ode V, 79. 

Quintum Novembris, In, 347. 
Rousium, Joannem, Ad, 375. 

Salsillum, Poetam Romanum, iEgrotantem, 

Ad, 362. 
Samson Agonistes : A Dramatic Poem, 

281. 
Shakespeare, On, 16. 
Skinner, Cyriack, To, 78. 
Skinner, Cyriack, To, 78. 
Song on May Morning, 30. 



INDEX OF TITLES 



4i7 



Sonnets : 

'"Diodati (e te '1 dir6 con maraviglia) " — 
" Diodati (I tell it thee with wonder;," 64. 

" Donna leggiadra, il cui bel uume onora " 
" Lady gay and gracious, whose fair name 
honors,"' 63. 

"Giovane, piano, e semplicetto amante " — 
l * A young-, and meek, and simple lover,"65. 

On his being arrived to the Age of Twenty- 
Three, 19. 

On his Blindness, 77. 

On his Deceased Wife, 78. 

On the Detraction which followed upon my 
writing Certain Treatises, 74. 

On the Same, 75. 

On the Late Massacre in Piemont, 77. 

On the Lord General Fairfax at the Siege of 
Colchester, 76. 

On the New Forcers of Conscience under the 
Long Parliament, 75. 

On the Religious Memory of Mrs. Catherine 
Thomson, my Christian Friend, Deceased 
Dec. 16, 1646,^ 76. 

" Per certo i bei vostr' occhi, Donna mia " — 
" In sooth, your beauteous eyes, my Lady," 
65. 

" Qnal in colle aspro, all' imbrunir di sera " — 
"As on a rough hillside, at dusk of even- 
ing,'' (54. 

To Cyriack Skinner, 78. 

To the Same, 78. 

To the Lady Margaret Ley, 74. 

To Mr. H. Lawes, on his Airs, 75. 

To Mr. Lawrence, 77. 

To Sir Henry Vane, the Younger. 77. 

'lo the Lord Oeneral Cromwell on the Pro- 
posals of ( Vrtain Ministers at the Commit- 
tee for the Propagation of the Gospel, 76. 

To the Nightingale, 30. 

To a Virtuous Young Lady. 7-1 . 

When the Assault was intended to the City, 
71. 



Stlvarum Liber - 

TKES, 346. 



Poems in Various Mk- 



That Nature is not. Subject to Old Age, 355. 

Thomson, Mrs. Catherine, My Christian 
Friend, Deceased Dec. 16, 1646, On the Reli- 
gious Memory of, 7(i. 

Time, On, :><). 

To a Virtuous Young Lady, 74. 

To Charles Diodati. 323. 

To Charles Diodati, while in the country, 337. 

To Cyriack Skinner, 78. 

To the Same, 78. 

To his Tutor, Thomas Young, Chaplain to the 
English Merchants at Hamburg, 329. 

To John Rouse, .'175. 

To Manso, 863. 

To Mr. H. Lawes on his Airs, 75. 

To Mr. Lawrence, 77. 

To My Father, 358. 

To Salsillo, a Roman Poet, in his Illness, 362. 

To Sir Henry Vane, the Younger, 77. 

To the Lady Margaret Ley, 74. 

To the Lord General Cromwell, on the Propo- 
sals of Certain Ministers at the Committee 
for the Propagation of the Gospel, 76. 

To the Nightingale, .'*>. 

Translations, 79. 

University Carrier, On the, 17. 
Upon the Circumcision, 31. 

Vacation Exercise in the College, At a, 13. 
Vane, Sir Henry, the Younger, To, 77. 
Virtuous Young Lady, To a, 74. 

When the Assault was intended to the City, 74. 
Winchester, Marchioness of, An Epitaph on, IS. 
Wintoniensis, Praesulis, In Obitum, 327. 

Young, Thomas, his Tutor, Chaplain to the 
English Merchants at Hamburg, To, :i'29. 



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